Can't Understand Feeling Quotes & Sayings

Honestly, I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all. I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing? Schopenhauer once said: Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will (Man can do what he will but he cannot will what he wills). — Albert Einstein

When you are thinking about something you don't understand you have a terrible, uncomfortable feeling called confusion. The confusion is, because we are all some kind of apes that are kind of stupid trying to figure out how to put two sticks together to reach the banana, and we can't quite make it. So I always feel stupid. Once in a while, I put the two sticks together, and I reach the banana. — Richard P. Feynman

Do you go see her?"
"No," I said, refusing to acknowledge that I'd just seen Lissa last night. "That's not my life anymore."
"Right. Your life is all about dangerous vigilante missions."
"You wouldn't understand anything that isn't drinking, smoking, or womanizing."
He shook his head. "You're the only one I want, Rose."
"Well, you can keep feeling that way, but you're going to have to keep waiting."
"Much longer?" He asked me.
"I don't know."
Hope blossomed on Adrian's face. "That's the most optimistic thing you've told me so far. — Richelle Mead

It frightens me that I can't do anything sensible about it."
"Are you scared that you'll wind up with a boring job where you have to see the same people every day and drink instant coffee?"
"I'm more scared that I'll forget the feeling I have now."
"Kind of like how you forgot how it feels to be three years old."
"That surely I'll wind up thinking I was so young, I didn't really understand everything. It bothers me that I know I will be wrong. — Gunnar Ardelius

Imagine not being frightened by any feeling. Imagine knowing that nothing will destroy you. That you are beyond any feeling, an state. Bigger than. Vaster than. That there is no reason to use drugs because anything a drug could do would pale in comparison to knowing who you are. To what you can understand, live, be, just by being with that presents itself to you in the form of the feelings you have ... — Geneen Roth

You are feeling better, no?' he asked.
My mouth dropped open. 'I thought you didn't speak our language...' I said.
He shrugged. 'I do not speak well, but I can say enough. I understand more what I hear than I am able to reply. To rule, you must learn. I study many languages. You learn more by listening than speaking, no? So that is what I do. I have learned much already by listening to your conversation with the sorceress. I know you false. I know you to be farmer boy, not prince. — Joseph Delaney

Flirtation doesn't have to go somewhere; it certainly doesn't need to end up in bed. I like to think of it as a little friendlier than a handshake, a little less intimate than a kiss. It's a way of saying hi, you look great, have a wonderful day. A tasteful flirtation, played out people who understand the rules, leave everyone feeling good and can perk up the bluest mood. — Karen Marie Moning

And I am left feeling that no matter how much the drip-drip-drip of hostility toward us is perpetuated by the liberal press, the American people simply do not believe it. They are rightly proud of the armed forces of the United States of America. They innately understand what we do. And no amount of poison about our alleged brutality, disregard of the Geneva Convention, and abuse of the human rights of terrorists is going to change what most people think ... Some members of the media might think they can brainwash the public any time they like, but I know they can't. Not here. Not in the United States of America. — Marcus Luttrell

I can feel pretty critical of people, and I understand that sort of feeling of when you're going through something that's painful, taking it out on the world and projecting onto other people, finding faults with other people because it's harder to find faults in yourself. — Noah Baumbach

I don't really know a whole lot about complicated, worldly things. But I think parents and siblings, they need to be able to care for each other unconditionally. How many people could you risk your life to protect? Not that many, I bet. Everyone's top priority is taking care of themselves. But if there's anyone who can overcome that, it's flesh and blood. If you understand that feeling, then you can look at other people, and realize, this person's family cares about them, too. That's a really heavy feeling. When you think about that, it becomes a lot harder to do horrible things to them. So I think that love for your family ... is really at the root of what it means to care for other people. — Mohiro Kitoh

On some levels, you can also have this feeling that we are being duped, somehow. And that the world is at play for something you would understand more if it were pure ideology. It is a very strange time and also basic things are being taken away. — Edwidge Danticat

Perhaps you would care to wear it. While we are in this chamber," he added hastily. She lifted her eyebrows. "Why?" "Because then you would be lord." "Why would I want that?" "Then you would rule over me. As I rule over you when I wear this ring." He looked at her earnestly. "To give you a feeling of power. At least while we are inside." She slowly folded her fingers over the ring and Richard was sure he'd appeased her. Then she shook her head. "You don't understand." She looked up at him. "I don't want to rule you." "But . . ." "Richard, I just want you to stop thinking of me as someone who isn't your equal. That's all." "But you're a woman!" "And you're a man." "You cannot fight." "You can't bear children." He frowned. "You couldn't defend the keep." "You couldn't build one." "And you could?" "I could." This wasn't proceeding as he had planned it should. — Lynn Kurland

To put it still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath.

We worry because we feel unsafe, and want to be safe. Yet it is perfectly useless to say that we should not want to be safe. Calling a desire bad names doesn't get rid of it. What we have to discover is that there is no safety, that seeking it is painful, and that when we imagine that we have found it, we don't like it. In other words, if we can really understand what we are looking for - that safety is isolation, and what we do to ourselves when we look for it - we shall see that we do not want it at all. No one has to tell you that you should not hold your breath for ten minutes. You know that you can't do it, and that the attempt is most uncomfortable. — Alan W. Watts

I liked the feeling of love,' [Jonas] confessed. He glanced nervously at the speaker on the wall, reassuring himself that no one was listening. 'I wish we still had that,' he whispered. 'Of course,' he added quickly, 'I do understand that it wouldn't work very well. And that it's much better to be organized the way we are now. I can see that it was a dangerous way to live.'
... 'Still,' he said slowly, almost to himself, 'I did like the light they made. And the warmth. — Lois Lowry

If we are to understand the human condition, and if we are to accept ourselves in all the complexity, self-doubt, extravagance of feeling, guilt, joy, the slow freeing of the self to its full capacity for action and creation, both as human being and as artist, we have to know all we can about each other, and we have to be willing to go naked. — May Sarton

Music makes me forget myself, my true condition, it carries me off into another state of being, one that isn't my own: under the influence of music I have the illusion of feeling things I don't really feel, of understanding things I don't understand, being able to do things I'm not able to do ( ... ) Can it really be allowable for anyone who feels like it to hypnotize another person, or many other persons, and then do what he likes with them? Particularly if the hypnotist is the first unscrupulous individual who happens to come along? — Leo Tolstoy

The function of mindfulness is, first, to recognize the suffering and then to take care of the suffering. The work of mindfulness is first to recognize the suffering and second to embrace it. A mother taking care of a crying baby naturally will take the child into her arms without suppressing, judging it, or ignoring the crying. Mindfulness is like that mother, recognizing and embracing suffering without judgement.
So the practice is not to fight or suppress the feeling, but rather to cradle it with a lot of tenderness. When a mother embraces her child, that energy of tenderness begins to penetrate into the body of the child. Even if the mother doesn't understand at first why the child is suffering and she needs some time to find out what the difficulty is, just her acto f taking the child into her arms with tenderness can alreadby bring relief. If we can recognize and cradle the suffering while we breathe mindfully, there is relief already. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Emotional Shades of Meaning
There are hundreds of emotions, ranging in degree and sometimes with only subtle differences between them. For instance, anger can range from mild irritation or annoyance to rage and fury; sadness can range from feeling a little blue to utter despair and hopelessness. It's important to understand the distinctions among emotions as well as to be able to assess how you feel. Because you feel annoyed with someone doesn't mean
you should fly into a rage and swear never to speak to them again. Because you feel sad about something that happened today doesn't mean the world will end and you should give up all hope of ever feeling better. Emotion dysregulation is a hallmark of BPD, and children raised by a parent with it may not have had the best emotional role model to learn from. — Kimberlee Roth

I can never look at these apparent contradictions between the great laws of nature without a feeling of physical uneasiness which amounts to suffering. Were mankind reduced to the necessity of choosing between two parties, one of whom injures his interest, and the other his conscience, we should have nothing to hope from the future. Happily, this is not the case; and to see Aristus regain his economical superiority, as well as his moral superiority, it is sufficient to understand this consoling maxim, which is no less true from having a paradoxical appearance, "To save is to spend. — Frederic Bastiat

...I understand where you're coming from. I know it isn't just a question of revenge. It's the feeling there are some things you can't let pass. If you did, you wouldn't be able to look at yourself in the mirror afterwards. — Jean-Claude Izzo

I am sure we should not shut our hearts against the healing influences that nature offers us. But I understand your feeling. I think we all experience the same thing. We resent the thought that anything can please us when someone we love is no longer here to share the pleasure with us, and we almost feel as if we were unfaithful to our sorrow when we find our interest in life returning to us. — L.M. Montgomery

I've seen it personally that people have a natural sensibility to Arabic script. I don't know it if it's because of the shape, I don't know what it is in this script that makes it so universal. But even if you don't understand it, you still have this feeling; you can feel the piece of art in front of you — EL Seed

Kayden can't love me because he doesn't understand love. He understands pain and hurt and disappointment, but not love. I know right then that I can't tell him how I'm feeling, but I can show him. — Jessica Sorensen

If I were to arrive at a foreign country like Czech Republic, I don't have to speak Czech to understand the feeling of the local sensations through architecture. That is a kind of communication that no language can perform. — Jimenez Lai

I don't want to wake up. I can't feel the cold of life. I can't feel fear in my dreams. When awake we are green and red bits glowing under a machine, lights turn off and on, and people of science convince themselves they know what's going on. Backs are patted, hand are shaken. Test, record, collect. They tell us what we already know. We are all dying, dying slow. When awake, there is a feeling of impending doom, and if you can't feel it, close your eyes, or open them further. When we're in a box underground, heaven is finally above us, but it's not in the sky. Heaven is the planet we lived on, and all of the angels are people. Here, in a dream, it's just me floating in the back of my mind, among parts we don't fully understand. — Craig Stone

The feeling persists that no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer and understand how a refrigerator works, just as no gentleman wears a brown suit in the city. Colleges may be to blame. English majors are encouraged, I know, to hate chemistry and physics, and to be proud because they are not dull and creepy and humorless and war-oriented like the engineers across the quad. And our most impressive critics have commonly been such English majors, and they are squeamish about technology to this very day. So it is natural for them to despise science fiction. — Kurt Vonnegut

I know we have only been together for a little over a year," I explained, quickly. "Maybe it's too soon? I understand if it's too soon. It's just that how you feel about the way we kiss? I feel that way about everything we do together. I love it. I love to be inside you, I love working with you, I love watching you work, I love fighting with you, and I love just sitting on the couch and laughing with you. I'm lost when I'm not with you, Chloe. I can't think of anything, or anyone, who is more important to me, every second. And so for me, that means we're already sort of married in my head. I guess I wanted to make it official somehow. Maybe I sound like an idiot?" I looked over at her, feeling my heart try to jackhammer its way up my throat. "I never expected to feel this way about someone. — Christina Lauren

Suddenly the memory of his wife came back to him and, no doubt feeling it would be too complicated to try to understand how he could have yielded to an impulse of happiness at such a time, he confined himself, in a habitual gesture of his whenever a difficult question came to his mind, to passing his hand over his forehead, wiping his eyes and the lenses of his lorgnon. Yet he could not be consoled for the death of his wife, but, during the two years he survived her, would say to my grandfather: It's odd, I think of my poor wife often, but I can't think of her for a long time. — Marcel Proust

The criteria [to take or refuse the role] is that I would love to have some kind of dialogue or communication with the director. I need to understand that we can communicate and that we like communication. That's something I have to have a strong feeling about. Secondly, I have to find the script intriguing or interesting. I don't have to understand the whole script, but I do have to find it intriguing. If those two things are present, that would probably be a yes. — Mads Mikkelsen

I am nowhere near wanting to kill myself. But I can understand feeling so detached from your own life. To feel that your connection to everyone else is so thin that all it would take is one decisive snip to be separated completely. If i don't cling, I drift. I feel that no one is holding me. In my life, I am the only one who holds. — David Levithan

He leveled his eyes at mine through the darkness. You asked me before if I could take away your memories. I can, and I wanted to. But taking them away wouldn't have stopped what you were feeling. It just would've kept you from being able to understand. In the end the only thing I could do was let you go through whatever you had to go through and hope you were strong enough to make it to the other side. Turns out you're pretty damn tough. — Angela B. Wade

And I was
this is just how I was afraid you'd take it. I knew it, that you'd think this means you were right to be afraid all the time and never feel secure or trust me. I knew it'd be 'See, you're leaving after all when you promised you wouldn't.' I knew it but I'm trying to explain anyway, okay? And I know you probably won't understand this either, but
wait
just try to listen and maybe absorb this, okay? Ready? Me leaving is not the confirmation of all your fears about me. It is not. It's because of them. Okay? Can you see that? It's your fear I can't take. It's your distrust and fear I've been trying to fight. And I can't anymore. I'm out of gas on it. If I loved you even a little less maybe I could take it. But this is killing me, this constant feeling that I am always scaring you and never making you feel secure. Can you see that? — David Foster Wallace

Commercial movies have no feeling, no sensitivity. Most people tell me people won't understand films with feeling. But everyone can feel. — John Cassavetes

The thing I want you especially to understand is this feeling of divine revelation. I feel that this structure was "out there" all along I just couldn't see it. And now I can! This is really what keeps me in the math game
the chance that I might glimpse some kind of secret underlying truth, some sort of message from the gods. — Paul Lockhart

My wife and I just don't have the same feelings for each other we used to have. I guess I just don't love her anymore and she doesn't love me. What can i do?"
"The feeling isn't there anymore?" I asked.
"That's right," he reaffirmed. "And we have three children we're really concerned about. What do you suggest?"
"love her," I replied.
"I told you, the feeling just isn't there anymore."
"Love her."
"You don't understand. the feeling of love just isn't there."
"Then love her. If the feeling isn't there, that's a good reason to love her."
"But how do you love when you don't love?"
"My friend , love is a verb. Love - the feeling - is a fruit of love, the verb. So love her. Serve her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that? — Stephen R. Covey

I understand what I'm saying here. Feeling this way is a theme in every girl's life, I think, and at that age, you think there's some other version of yourself that is waiting to come out and blow everyone's dick off. I am so glad this is almost fifteen years ago and I know myself and my body now. Sorry, girls this age, but if you can, just skip the self-hatred and the striving to be some other type of girl. Just let that phase pass you by and love yourself how you are. Don't waste any energy on it. If you want to lose a little weight, fine. Make sure you are healthy, but fuck, skip all the rest. You are hot and the person who will love you won't notice ten pounds. I really promise. — Amy Schumer

People are really excited about robotic exploration. I understand the feeling there because, in fact, robots can do things humans can't. They can survive harsh conditions, they can explore places we would never go, plus you never actually have to bring them back. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Lack of feeling in an emotional sense is responsible for the way some singers do our songs. They don't understand and are too old to grasp the feeling. Beatles are really the only people who can play Beatle music. — John Lennon

People always say that they want to understand so that they can believe. But in MY reality it's just the opposite. I believe because I DON'T understand. I HAVE to believe, because there's no other way to explain what I'm seeing, feeling, or experiencing. — Sean Patrick Flanery

We need people to whom we can talk and who will understand without invalidating our feelings by saying the following: You shouldn't feel that way. It's not that bad. You're overreacting. Don't be so sensitive. Where's your faith? Instead, they say, I understand. That really sounds sad. What a terrible feeling! Oh, I'm sorry you went through that. — Henry Cloud

What a hypocrite I am; I spend my whole life reading books that allude to happiness, when I refuse to experience it. Sadness is an emotion you can trust. It is stronger than all of the other emotions. It makes happiness look fickle and untrustworthy. It pervades, lasts longer, and replaces the good feelings with such an eloquent ease you don't even feel the shift until you are suddenly wrapped in its chains. How hard we strive for happiness, and once we finally have the elusive feeling in our grasp, we hold it briefly, like water as it trickles through our fingers. I don't want to hold water. I want to hold something heavy and solid. Something I can understand. I understand sadness, and so I trust it. We are meant to feel sadness, if only to protect us from the brief spiels of happiness. Darkness is all I'll ever know; maybe the key is to make poetry out of it. — Tarryn Fisher

You're going to make your lip bleed, biting it like that," he said.
"I'm feeling ... kind of nervous."
"I can see that. Would it help if I held your hand?"
I shook my head vigorously.
No, it would make things worse, you idiot! Quite apart from the fact that I'm at a total loss to understand the way you're treating me now, anyway! Not to mention our relationship in general. What's more, Mr. Whitman is looking at us like some kind of know-it-all squirrel!
I almost groaned aloud. Would I feel any better if I told him any of what I was thinking? I thought about doing just that for a moment, but I didn't. — Kerstin Gier

Also for me, I don't make endless movies back to back all the time, I really sort of come to understand and love the characters that I play. And with April and Hanna you sort of go through a weird period of feeling sad about letting them go. Sometimes that takes me a week and sometimes it takes me a couple of months, just so that I can feel I can realign my own thoughts again. I do feel really, really blessed that I've had these opportunities. — Kate Winslet

It's a strange thing, being the parent of a teenager. One thing to raise a little boy, another entirely when a person on the brink of adulthood looks to you for wisdom. I feel like I have little to give. I know there are fathers who see the world a certain way, with clarity and confidence, who know just what to say to their sons and daughters. But I'm not one of them. The older I get, the less I understand. I love my son. He means everything to me. And yet, I can't escape the feeling that I'm failing him. Sending him off to the wolves with nothing but the crumbs of my uncertain perspective. I — Blake Crouch

I believe in the human spirit. And usually the people who are following me - my fans and things like that - are like-minded people, in that regard. They like to hear about people being in pain, but that are okay, and people feeling like they can't go on, but then they find a reason to go on. How do you marry someone and love them, and then they die? How does that happen? Why are we on this journey? They want to talk about things, and they want to understand. So, this is the perfect vehicle for that. — J.H. Wyman

The only good thing to come out of it was a kind of wisdom in Hirsch. He'd grown to understand that police officers can drift over time, and it isn't always or entirely conscious but a loss of perspective. Real and imagined grievances develop, a feeling that the job deserved greater and better public recognition. Rewards, for example, in the form of more money, more or better sex, a promotion, a junket to an interstate conference, greater respect in general. Some of these rewards were graspable, others the thwarted dreams that drove their grievances. Cynism set it. The bad guys always got away with it, and the media seized on the police officer who took a bribe rather than the one who helped orphans. So why not take shortcuts and bend the rules?? — Garry Disher

Deeply our life is a confusion, a mess, a misery, an agony. The more sensitive we are, the more the despair, the anxiety, the guilt feeling, and naturally we want to escape from it because we haven't found an answer; we don't know how to get out of this confusion. We want to go to some other realm, to another dimension. We escape through music, through art, through literature, but it is just an escape; it has no reality in comparison with what we are seeking. All escapes are similar, whether through the door of a church, through God or a savior, through the door of drink or of various drugs. We must not only understand what and why we are seeking, but we must also understand this demand for deep, abiding experience, because it is only the mind that does not seek at all, that does not demand any experience in any form, that can enter into a realm, into a dimension that is totally new. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Singing brings out in me what I can't normally bring out in everyday life. It's an incredible feeling to be able to bare your soul to people you've never met in a way that can make them understand so clearly what you mean. That's what I love most about singing ... it becomes my truest form of communication. — Josh Groban

I love going somewhere like Japan where you can't understand a word of the advertising - you just see it for its aesthetic beauty, without feeling that you're being sold something. — Stanley Donwood

I guess I have a faith. I have an overriding feeling that all of this can't be for nothing. But then I also fully understand that it might be. — James Corden

All you have to do is hold your first soldier who is dying in your arms, and have that terribly futile feeling that I can't do anything about it ... Then you understand the horror of war. — Norman Schwarzkopf

I know more of the world than you do," she said. "I know how men like Stiva look at it. You speak of his talking of you with her. That never happened. Such men are unfaithful, but their home and wife are sacred to them. Somehow or other these women are still looked on with contempt by them, and do not touch on their feeling for their family. They draw a sort of line that can't be crossed between them and their families. I don't understand it, but it is so. — Leo Tolstoy

But I don't understand things!" Danny burst out. "I do but I don't! People ... they feel things and I feel them, but I don't know what I'm feeling!" He looked down at his lap wretchedly. "I wish I could read. Sometimes Tony shows me signs and I can hardly read any of them. — Stephen King

You're not eating anything," said Marilla sharply, eying her as if it were a serious shortcoming. Anne sighed.
I can't. I'm in the depths of despair. Can you eat when
you are in the depths of despair?"
I've never been in the depths of despair, so I can't say," responded Marilla.
Weren't you? Well, did you ever try to IMAGINE you were in
the depths of despair?"
No, I didn't."
Then I don't think you can understand what it's like. It's very uncomfortable a feeling indeed. — L.M. Montgomery

It happens when I get really excited. The more excited I get, the more I vibrate."
"Now there's a thought," Lor says.
"If you mean what I think you mean, you want to shut the fuck up and never think it again," Ryodan says.
"Just saying, boss," Lor says. "You can't tell me you didn't think it, too."
I never understand half of what these dudes are talking about and don't care. "You can touch me if you want to," I say to Lor magnanimously. I'm so pumped on adrenaline and excitement that I'm feeling downright sociable. I poke one of my shoulders toward him. "Check me out. It feels really cool."
All heads swivel my way, then they look back at Ryodan.
"He doesn't own my fecking shoulder. Why you looking at him? — Karen Marie Moning

Desire is simple," he said. "Desire is something even a machine can understand." There was a stillness in the air that mirrored the stillness of his body. "But when I desired you I began to love you. You were the first being I ever loved. I didn't know it, of course. I had no idea what it meant, no idea what I was feeling. Love was never something I was supposed to experience. I don't think I was supposed to know desire, either, but she never expected me to meet you." He laughed against her skin. "Later, after your father ... when he took out those restrictions, I was finally able to understand the complexities of love. Even if I didn't want to. At first. — Cassandra Rose Clarke

Love and lust aren't always in sync. You can love someone, but not be
ready to have sex with them. Or you can meet someone random and end up jumping in all the way. There's nothing wrong with either. You've waited this long, so wait until you're really feeling
it. If he's The One, he'll understand. — Dorota Skrzypek

She hasn't cried once. SHe doesn't understand that Margaret is dead. At that age, they can't fully understand the concept of death. It's a good thing really.
Jane fully understood the concept of death and she felt truly injured that Aunt Bess considered her unmoved. Jane thought it should be perfectly clear to everyone that rearranging the furniture in her dollhouse was her expression of grief. She had been moving the Mother Doll (it was a nuclear family of dolls that consisted of a mother, a father, a boy, and a girl) and all the Mother Doll's possessions into the dollhouse's attic. Jane wondered why tears were considered a superior form of grief to the rearrangement of one's dollhouse.
Feeling terribly misunderstood, Jane began to cry.
Oh listen, said Aunt Bess, she begins to understand. — Gabrielle Zevin

It wasn't the intention to do something important, or to even relate about social issues. The ground is so fertile in the justice world, dealing with the death penalty and the Innocence Project, for characters that have a moral ambiguity, which we were both attracted to. It's the idea that everybody has their reasons. Whatever their actions are, whether you agree with them or not, you can understand why they're feeling that way, in terms of racism or even the death penalty. — Richard LaGravenese

At the beginning of each chapter, a heading tells us about what is happening in the chapter. We can ask, "What was going on here? What was this person feeling?" When we take time to look more closely at the scriptures, we can better understand what they can teach us. This will build our self-confidence and our testimony. — Allan F. Packer

I feel I'm better now than I ever have been. You learn so much as you're doing it. I'm watching tapes and I'll see things that get me annoyed and where I know I can improve. I understand better letting the crowd play more. I've always said it was important for me who I was working with, because I like to kid around a lot. But I've also learned to use my partner better. I'm feeling good. There's no reason to stop. — Marv Albert

We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization - black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love ... What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black. — Robert F. Kennedy

Have you ever been turned down by a girl who afterwards married and then been introduced to her husband? If so you'll understand how I felt when Clarence burst on me. You know the feeling. First of all, when you hear about the marriage, you say to yourself, "I wonder what he's like." Then you meet him, and think, "There must be some mistake. She can't have preferred this to me! — P.G. Wodehouse

There are things in your life which you are in control of, and those you're not. You need to not care about those things which you're not in control of, and when you come to really understand that, you can go from being really upset about something to that lovely feeling of being a kid where everything is okay. — Derren Brown

Like heartbreak, these unpredictable crises are not something you should live in fear of. Perpetual fear won't protect you. Fear is not a citronella candle; scary life happenings are not mosquitoes. They happen in ways we can't predict, control or understand. The only guaranteed outcome of feeling scared all the time is that you will feel scared all the time. — Kelly Williams Brown

So my hope, each day as I grow older, is that this will never be simply chronological aging ... but that I will also grow into maturity, where the experience which can be acquired only through chronology will teach me how to be more aware, open, unafraid to be vulnerable, involved, committed, to accept disagreement without feeling threatened (repeat and underline this one), to understand that I cannot take myself seriously until I stop taking myself seriously - to be, in fact, a true adult.
To be. — Madeleine L'Engle

How can [actors] learn their lines and be honest in front of 30 people and all the lights? It makes me cry sometimes. I can't understand how they can be joking with me 30 seconds before, and 40 seconds later they're giving me all this incredible feeling. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Having been a Protestant, you may have the feeling that you must feel you believe; perhaps feeling belief is not always an illusion but I imagine it is most of the time; but I can understand the feeling of pain on going to Communion and it seems a more reliable feeling than joy. Do you know the Hopkins-Bridges correspondence? Bridges wrote Hopkins at one point and asked him how he could possibly learn to believe, expecting, I suppose, a metaphysical answer. Hopkins only said, "Give alms. — Flannery O'Connor

I understand now that the vulnerability I've always felt is the greatest strength a person can have. You can't experience life without feeling life. What I've learned is that being vulnerable to somebody you love is not a weakness, it's a strength. — Elisabeth Shue

If all stories are fiction, fiction can be true
not in detail or fact, but in some transformed version of feeling. If there is a memory of paradise, paradise can exist, in some other place or country dimensionally reminiscent of our own. The sad stories live there too, but in that country, we know what they mean and why they happened. We make our way back from them, finding the way through a bountiful wilderness we begin to understand. Years are nothing: Story conquers all distance. — Jayne Anne Phillips

Religion, mysticism and magic all spring from the same basic 'feeling' about the universe: a sudden feeling of meaning, which human beings sometimes 'pick up' accidentally, as your radio might pick up some unknown station. Poets feel that we are cut off from meaning by a thick, lead wall, and that sometimes for no reason we can understand the wall seems to vanish and we are suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of the infinite interestingness of things. — Colin Wilson

Like many people, I feel like celebrating. Remember this feeling. It is human, and can help us understand when others express bloodlust. — John Green

You may not understand this, but I don't think it matters killing people so long as you don't hate them. I also think that there are times when you can only show your feeling of brotherhood for someone else by killing him, or trying to. I believe most ordinary people feel this and would make a peace in that sense if they had any say in the matter. There has been very little popular resistance to this war, and also very little hatred. It is a job that has to be done. — George Orwell

Most girls take one look at you and swoon. You've never had to really work for someone's affection or put effort into maintaining it. In many ways, your natural gifts have done you a disservice
they've stunted your sensitivity and charm! You've never had to develop insight into what will make a girl laugh and come to love you for reasons that aren't handsome or heroic. That's why smees are experts on the subtle arts of courtship and seduction; nothing comes easy to us, but we do understand and live by the Lover's Maxim."
"And what on earth is the Lover's Maxim?" asked Maz, feeling very uninformed.
The smee cleared his throat. "If you can't be handsome, be rich. If you can't be rich, be strong. If you cant be strong, be witty."
"But what if you can't be witty?" Max wondered.
"Learn the guitar. — Henry H. Neff

Why is physical love bad and spiritual love good? I don't understand. I can't help feeling that they are the same. I would like to boast that I am she who could destroy her body and soul in Gehenna for the sake of a love, for the sake of a passion she could not understand, or for the sake of the sorrow they engendered. — Osamu Dazai

Baby you're the only light I ever saw. I make the most of all the sadness, you be a bitch because you can. You try to hit me just to hurt me so you leave me feeling dirty 'cause you can't understand. We're going down and you could see it to ... we're slow dancing in a burning room!!! — John Mayer

So if we can't express it or repress it, what do we do when we feel angry? The answer is to recognize the anger, but choose to respond to the situation differently. Easier said than done, right? Can you actually imagine trying to strong-arm your anger into another, more amicable feeling? It would never work. Determination alone won't work. It takes a new intelligence to understand and manage our emotions. By getting your head and heart in coherence and allowing the heart's intelligence to work for you, you can have a realistic chance of transforming your anger in a healthy way. — Doc Childre

You can't understand it; for you men, who are free and make your own choice, it's always clear whom you love. But a girl's in a position of suspense, with all a woman's or maiden's modesty, a girl who sees you men from afar, who takes everything on trust, - a girl may have, and often has, such a feeling that she cannot tell what to say. — Leo Tolstoy

Fellow-feeling ... is the most important factor in producing a healthy political and social life. Neither our national nor our local civic life can be what it should be unless it is marked by the fellow-feeling, the mutual kindness, the mutual respect, the sense of common duties and common interests, which arise when men take the trouble to understand one another, and to associate together for a common object. A very large share of the rancor of political and social strife arises either from sheer misunderstanding by one section, or by one class, of another, or else from the fact that the two sections, or two classes, are so cut off from each other that neither appreciates the other's passions, prejudices, and, indeed, point of view, while they are both entirely ignorant of their community of feeling as regards the essentials of manhood and humanity. — Theodore Roosevelt

That man sitting on the steps made me understand that I was important to the world and to the history of my country. I felt necessary, and that's the best feeling a human being can have. — Paulo Coelho

Loneliness doesn't come from being alone, but from being surrounded by people who can't understand you. A deep feeling of isolation comes when you realize that even the person standing right next to you is unreachable. — Anonymous

Whatever you do, don't feel sorry for me. I know it's the best you can do. Life hasn't hit you in your perfect little bubble yet. Please don't try to understand. Nobody can. No one knows what it's like to be me, except others like me. You're making me pissed. You're making me feel bad. Stop reminding me that I have no life. I don't care about your prom. Yes, I know I haven't talked to you in a while. NO, I'm not ignoring you, but it's not exactly like you've been calling me either. I just haven't been feeling well lately. I'm tired and my body is aching all over. It's hurting all the time. I can barely move when it rains, and some days I just don't want to do anything. SHUT UP. — Jacquelyn Nicole Davis

What I'm feeling, I think, is joy. And it's been some time since I've felt that blinkered rush of happiness, This might be one of those rare events that lasts, one that'll be remembered and recalled as months and years wind and ravel. One of those sweet, significant moments that leaves a footprint in your mind. A photograph couldn't ever tell its story. It's like something you have to live to understand. One of those freak collisions of fizzing meteors and looming celestial bodies and floating debris and one single beautiful red ball that bursts into your life and through your body like an enormous firework. Where things shift into focus for a moment, and everything makes sense. And it becomes one of those things inside you, a pearl among sludge, one of those big exaggerated memories you can invoke at any moment to peel away a little layer of how you felt, like a lick of ice cream. The flavor of grace. — Craig Silvey

A lot of guys really I get the feeling don't care whether you like their show or not, you know. I want people to enjoy what I do, and understand what I'm doing is for their enjoyment, it's all I can ask for. — Regis Philbin

My mother walks forward. She's crying, but there's a smile on her face. For God's sake, is it any wonder I can't ever understand what you people are feeling? — Jodi Picoult

Can you imagine how lonely she must have felt when she received that phone call? Your lover has just died, your companion has abandoned you, but don't you dare make an inappropriate sound, because your family is around. No one to touch you the way he did, no one to understand you, no one to hug you to sleep, but don't dare allow your face to show a glint of grief. The cutting pain of feeling alone amid loved ones. — Rabih Alameddine

Feeling my way through the darkness
Guided by a beating heart
I can't tell where the journey will end
But I know where to start

They tell me I'm too young to understand
They say I'm caught up in a dream
Well life will pass me by if I don't open up my eyes
Well that's fine by me — Avicii

He can't shake the feeling that this place is some sort of pyramid scheme, and that those who fail to understand that will be left empty-handed. But there's no obvious reason for this feeling of his. Maybe he's ungrateful by nature. — Margaret Atwood

I just never had a friend who cared as you do. My best friend Destiny doesn't understand me, she has a husband and a child. A life I have always wanted, but unfortunately, tables have turned to where I can't find that one guy I could love."
Angel felt bad for feeling lust for the straight woman. She should have known better.
"Jana, men have no idea what they are missing. You are as beautiful as they come and I would appreciate you more than any man would. — Amber M. Kestner

She scolded him with fire in her eyes, feeling where he was going, feeling as if she was stabbed in the heart. I wasn't saying it was bad. Different doesn't mean bad. In fact, I think you are so ... beautiful! What you say ... it makes sense to me in ways I can't even understand. — Darryl Steven Markowitz

Tessa craned her head back to look at Will. "You know that feeling," she said, "when you are reading a book, and you know that it is going to be a tragedy; you can feel the cold and darkness coming, see the net drawing tight around the characters who live and breathe on the pages. But you are tied to the story as if being dragged behind a carriage and you cannot let go or turn the course aside." His blue eyes were dark with understanding - of course Will would understand - and she hurried on. "I feel now as if the same is happening, only not to characters on a page but to my own beloved friends and companions. I do not want to sit by while tragedy comes for us. I would turn it aside, only I struggle to discover how that might be done."
"You fear for Jem," Will said.
"Yes," she said. "And I fear for you, too."
"No," Will said, hoarsely. "Don't waste that on me, Tess. — Cassandra Clare

At some unnoticed moment, I began to understand that a life is written in indelible ink. What I've chosen, what's happened unchosen, can't be unmade or redone. Poetry, though, is a door that only continues to open. Even the unchangeable past changes inside a poem. Not the facts, but the feeling, the comprehension. — Jane Hirshfield

Forgiveness is not a matter of feeling superior, of feeling sorry for our parents because they didn't' know any better. It comes when we understand that as humans we all do the very best we can, and we can't ask for more than that. Forgiveness is making the choice to find no more value in anger, and to see that we are all God's light, all joined, and the separations we feel are only part of the illusions of the ego. — Gerald Jampolsky

Tommy and I put on a radio play to entertain everyone while they unpacked their cookies. It was about a girl who saves up money for a prom dress, but at the last minute she says, "It's only clothes," and buys war bonds instead. The play was a big success, and my whole school pledged to buy war bonds, which should have made me happy. But it gave me a queer feeling; it's easy to write propaganda when everyone agrees with you. Do you understand? I think I'd rather bake cookies; it feels more honest.
Your friend,
Lulu


Sammy looked down at me. "A girl after your own heart!" he said. "In my experience it is a rare female who can say, 'It's only clothes,' and when the war came, you discovered who you really were. Women changed. Children grew up overnight. I wonder what happened to this one. — Ruth Reichl

In one sense, I have always felt glad to have had the war [World War II] in my childhood, because, as a result, nothing that has happened in the world since then has ever seemed quite so bad. On the other hand, I never entirely got over my feeling of being cheated when the promised era of peace in a wonderful "post-war world" failed to materialize. I could not understand how, after all that, people could ever even think of fighting again. And I still can't. — Ashleigh Brilliant

It's not the image that you bow to, but it's to the faith and feeling that remains true in your heart. And if you could relate to that internal feeling, then you can also relate to the immense universal consciousness outside the realm of your understanding, without the need to know or understand. - The Monk (Page - 46) — Shashi

Poor dog! I've a strange feeling about the dumb things as if they wanted to speak, and it was a trouble to 'em because they couldn't. I can't help being sorry for the dogs always, though perhaps there's no need. But they may well have more in them than they know how to make us understand, for we can't say half what we feel, with all our words. — George Eliot

We can not understand each other, if every time we venture out we stick the feather of cocksureness in our caps. No, we can never wholly understand each other, and rise to the level of mutual esteem at least, if we do not invest in that fellow feeling that triumphs over class and creed and race and color. — Ameen Rihani

I don't write so that people will understand me, I write because I know they don't. And, I can't help feeling like I should at least give them the illusion that they do. — Thurman P. Banks Jr.

Without producing, no man can love, nor can he understand or remember, nor have the power of feeling and being. — Ramon Llull