Overwhelming Feeling Quotes & Sayings

There were in this strange nature, depths so awful and profound that it was not to be sounded or to be judged as others were. But one thing could have melted or caused the unconquerable spirit to bend, and this was the overwhelming passion of love
not a slight, tender feeling, but a great and powerful one, such as could be awakened but by a being of as strong and deep a nature as itself, one who was in all things its peer. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

The halls were empty. Charlotte had missed the first bell and would be late, again. Her homeroom teacher would ask her for an excuse and she would say, 'Overwhelming feeling of dread.' That was going to go over nicely. — Anne Ursu

I often thought grief was like madness - the lack of control, the overwhelming waves of emotion with unexpected triggers, breathlessness, night sweats, nightmares, and the feeling of utter aloneness, like that of standing on a ledge in a violent wind. — Erika Robuck

You know what's sad about reading books? It's that you fall in love with the characters. They grow on you. And as you read, you start to feel what they feel - all of them - you become them. And when you're done, you're never the same. Sure you're still you, you look the same, talk in the same manner, but something in you has changed. Something in the way you think, the way you choose, sometimes, even the things you say may differ. But it all comes down to the state you go to after a nice novel. The after-feeling. It's amazing, but somehow, you feel left alone by that world you were once in. It's overwhelming. But it makes you sad. Cause for once you were this, this otherworldly being in ... Neverwhere, and then you suddenly have to say goodbye after a few weeks from when you read the last page. When you've recovered from that state it's just ... quite sad. — Suzanne Collins

I kept glancing at her animated face, scrunched up as though imitating an adult. I got hit with that overwhelming feeling. It sneaked up on me. Parents get it from time to time. You are looking at your child and it is an ordinary moment, not like they are onstage or hitting a winning shop, just sitting there, and you look at them and you know that they are your whole life and that moves you and scares you and makes you want to stop time. — Harlan Coben

Caffeine gives me hope. Sometimes, when I brew my wicked strong Irish black tea just perfect, about halfway through the mug I feel a clear and overwhelming feeling of optimism. It didn't surprise me when a study a few years ago implied that suicide was much less likely among coffee and tea drinkers. — John Vanderslice

Out in Saxe-Coburg Street she stood still for a moment and looked at the gardens. He kissed me, she thought. He made the move; I didn't. The thought was an overwhelming one and invested the everyday world about her, the world of the square, of trees, of people walking by, with a curious glow, a chiaroscuro which made everything precious. It was the feeling, she imagined, that one had when one vouchsafed a vision. Everything is changed, becomes more blessed, making the humblest of surroundings a holy place. — Alexander McCall Smith

I believe I have stumbled on at least one possibility: if you are compelled to tell others virtually everything you learn from God, you might be a teacher! My friends who have other spiritual gifts can learn something from God without feeling the overwhelming need to share it with everyone they know. Not me! The second I receive the least spiritual insight or learn anything at all about the practicality of Scripture slapped on the hot pavement of real life, I want to make the world's biggest conference call. — Beth Moore

I assigned myself the role of Lot's wife, because her behavior seemed the most human, the most sinful, and therefore closest to mine. Consumed by curiosity, I was drawn to the magnificent, horrible sight of fire and disaster as houses collapsed and towers folded like dominoes amidst human wailing that rose to the sky. My curiosity, brought to an explosive point by the divine warning, was suddenly transformed into my sole trait, overwhelming reason and the feeling of fear, turning me into a weakling of a woman, unable to resist my inquisitiveness, and I would turn around abruptly with my whole body as if rotated by the centrifugal force of my curiosity, which had passed through me like a sword. — Danilo Kis

There is also enmeshment and boundary confusion between the daughter and mother. The daughter is often carrying the mother's repressed anger and sadness about the father. This feels overwhelming since these are deeply repressed emotions. Therefore, to starve and avoid eating is a protection against feeling these overwhelming emotions. — John Bradshaw

It's scary for me to act. It's terrifying. But I must be addicted to the adrenaline rush of the fear. It's like bungee jumping, I suppose. But after I accomplish it, I get this great sense of satisfaction and an overwhelming feeling of well being. — Virginia Hey

I never knew how much I missed pickles and pickle juice. It's like, an overwhelming feeling that I can't even explain. — Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi

And here I was at the end of my trip, with everything just as fuzzy and unreal as the beginning. It was easier for me to see myself in Rick's lens, riding down to the beach in that cliched sunset, just as it was easier for me to stand with my friends and wave goodbye to the loopy woman with the camels, the itching smell of the dust around us, and in our eyes the feat that we had left so much unsaid. There was an unpronounceable joy and an aching sadness to it. It had all happened too suddenly. I didn't believe this was the end at all. There must be some mistake. Someone had just robbed me of a couple of month in there somewhere. There was not so much an anticlimactic quality about the arrival at the ocean, as the overwhelming feeling that I had somehow misplaced the penultimate scene. — Robyn Davidson

Love in all its forms is very difficult ... to express. It changes, obviously. If you're young, and you're romantically in love with somebody, and often if you've just met somebody, its crazy! It's completely overwhelming. You can't think of anything else. You just want to climb inside the other person and live under their pancreas. And then it mellows, somewhat ... to the point where you can barely look at them ... without feeling a mild distaste — Dylan Moran

I had always wondered why people closed their eyes when they kissed. Now I knew: they can't help it. The feeling is too overwhelming: the taste, the touch, the smell, even the sound. The sense of sight had to be excluded, or it wouldn't be possible to funciton. — Elise Allen

How are you feeling?" Charlie asked, adding a small bottle of V-8 juice to the bedside table.
"Like I just sat through an entire Justin Bieber concert."
"Headache and nausea?
"And an overwhelming desire to die. — Tammy Blackwell

I inhale his dark scent, and I have the overwhelming feeling of coming home — Katie McGarry

And suddenly it was all too much for him. He felt sad and misplaced, with the abrupt, overwhelming, dizzying sadness that comes over people in countries not their own, which has none of the richness of feeling that usually comes with sadness but is rather a kind of exhaustion. — Caleb Crain

He stared at Ryan and felt that overwhelming feeling he sometimes got when he looked at his boys - part pure joy, part fear of what could happen to them in this cruel world, part wishes and hopes, all blended together in the only thing in this entire planet that felt completely pure. — Harlan Coben

We were going to have an all-day drinking binge. Gonna ride our bikes, hang out ... do naughty things. But I started feeling this overwhelming guilt. — Jessica Simpson

What I remember most clearly is how it felt. I'd just finished painting a red fire engine-like the one I often walked past near my grandparents' house. Suddenly the teachers, whose names I've long forgotten, closed in on my desk. They seemed unusually impressed, and my still dripping fire engine was immediately and ceremoniously pinned up. I don't know what they might have said, but their unexpected attention and having something I'd made given a place of honor on the wall created an overwhelming and totally unfamiliar sense of pride inside me. I loved that feeling, and I wanted to feel it again and again. That desire, I suppose, was the beginning of my career.
I have no idea where my fire engine painting ended up, but I never forgot the basic layout. Several decades later, it served as the inspiration for this sketch for an illustration in a book called Why the chicken crossed the Road. — David Macaulay

Horse Frightened by a Lion depicts a majestic stallion in a very different situation. Stubbs painted this magnetic masterpiece to illustrate the nature of the sublime, which was one of his era's most popular philosophical concepts,and its relation to a timelessly riveting feeling: fear. The magnificent horse galloping through a vast wilderness encounters the bottom-up stimulus of a crouching predator and responds with a dramatic display of what psychologists mildly call "negative emotion." The equine superstar's arched neck, dilated eyes, and flared nostrils are in fact the very picture of overwhelming dread. The painting's subject matter reflects he philosopher Edmund Burke's widely circulated Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, which asserts that because "terror" is unparalleled in commanding "astonishment," or total, single-pointed,
indeed, rapt
attention, it is "the ruling principle of the sublime. — Winifred Gallagher

They must take me for a fool, or even worse, a lunatic. And no wonder ,for I am so intensely conscious of my misfortune and my misery is so overwhelming that I am powerless to resist it and am being turned into stone, devoid of all knowledge or feeling. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I remember sitting in the theater watching 'Bridesmaids,' and I'm doubled over laughing, and then I'm crying in the same movie. It's the overwhelming feeling, as I'm looking up and seeing these women, and I'm realizing how rare it is to see that. — Gina Prince-Bythewood

Procrastination is a common reaction to feeling overwhelmed or fear of failure. Instead of taking on too much at once and overwhelming yourself, break things down and take one small action step at a time. — Lauren Mackler

Sham Harga's coffee was like molten lead, but it had this in its favor: when you'd drunk it, there was this overwhelming feeling of relief that you'd got to the bottom of the cup. — Terry Pratchett

People are more likely to fall intensely in love when they are anxious and their self-esteem is lowest.... Feeling inadequate, unhappy, and empty are virtual prerequisites for falling and staying desperately in love; at least temporarily, the ecstasy of desire seems to cure everything that ails you. There is a connection between aversive states of mind -- loneliness, shame, even grief and horror -- and a propensity to feel overwhelming passion; this is one reason why romances blossom in times of war or natural disasters, as well as during the private disasters of our everyday lives. — Jeanne Safer

That beautiful sister of mine was an overwhelming and volatile mixture. One had the feeling that she'd been shot from a canon and showered her sparks over an incredulous world with no thought or care where they fell, a carbon copy of father. She was like some silvery comet who streaked through life with daring speed, the wellspring of which was an inner confidence that I deeply admired. At times, particularly in childhood, I was intimidated by her but she dictated from an aura of affection for me that was never threatening. — Joan Bennett

I'd been told that when you first put your feet on African ground, you'll be hit by a feeling of overwhelming understanding, like you've returned home and suddenly belong. Quite frankly, I didn't feel that. — Jill Scott

Griffin Hansbury, who was born female but underwent a sex change after graduating from college, has another well-informed view of the powers of testosterone. "The world just changes," he said. "The most overwhelming feeling was the incredible increase in libido and change in the way I perceived women." Before the hormone treatments, Hansbury said, an attractive woman in the street would provoke an internal narrative: "She's attractive. I'd like to meet her." But after the injections, no more narrative. Any attractive quality in a woman, "nice ankles or something," was enough to "flood my mind with aggressive pornographic images, just one after another ... Everything I looked at, everything I touched turned to sex." He concluded, "I felt like a monster a lot of the time. It made me understand men. It made me understand adolescent boys a lot. — Christopher Ryan

It may be somewhat paradoxical to refer to shame as a 'feeling,' for while shame is initially painful, constant shaming leads to a deadening of feeling. Shame, like cold, is, in essence, the absence of warmth. And when it reaches overwhelming intensity, shame is experienced, like cold, as a feeling of numbness and deadness. [In Dante's Inferno] the lowest circle of hell was a region not of flames, but of ice---absolute coldness. — James Gilligan

One of ennui's most terribel components is the overwhelming feeling of ennui that comes over you whenever you try to explain it. — Ingmar Bergman

I feel like I've been in a dark tunnel, but now I'm no longer blinded by darkness, but rather by an overwhelming brightness. A brightness that makes me barely able to open my eyes. It's like I have no choice but to gravitate towards it, like it's pulling me out into the light. It's the best feeling in the world. It's my saving grace. — J.B. McGee

Suddenly a feeling swam over her with a mighty strength. The feeling was both overwhelming and peaceful, linking her to some cosmic and eternal force as the earth around her became more vibrant and alive. It was as if heaven and earth, past and present, were all one in an instant. — Mike Ericksen

The answer: I was never actually pursuing sexual freedom. I was pursuing control, power, and self-worth. I was either acting like my mom or making someone into my mom. But rarely was I actually myself. Because, as I witnessed on ecstasy, the feeling that I'm not acceptable as I am is so fucking overwhelming that I'm terrified to let go and just be myself with anyone. — Neil Strauss

We live in a world of illusions. We think we're aware of everything going on around us. We look out and see an uninterrupted, complete picture of the visual world, composed of thousands of little detailed images. We may know that each of us has a blind spot, but we go on day to day blissfully unaware of where it actually is because our occipital cortex does such a good job of filling in the missing information and hence hiding it from us. Laboratory demonstrations of inattentional blindness (like the gorilla video of the last chapter) underscore how little of the world we actually perceive, in spite of the overwhelming feeling that we're getting it all. — Daniel J. Levitin

This overwhelming, encompassing feeling is love. It's not perfect and it's messy as hell. And it's exactly what I need. — Katie McGarry

The last time she had felt an overwhelming sense of doom, she had learned her parents had died in a car accident earlier on a day just like this one, her last year at high school. She shuddered, despite telling herself the disquieting feeling didn't mean anything. — Terry Spear

Oh, thank you, I thought, feeling an overwhelming sense of relief. Dancing was stressful - but murderous demigods, those I could deal with. — Brandon Sanderson

I set my glass down and met his eyes, feeling an overwhelming surge of affection for this man. "That ... makes sense," I said, searching for the right words. "I don't think I appreciated what it meant to see you ever day, either. Even if I did want to poison you on no less than twenty-seven separate occasions."
"Ditto," he replied with a smirk. "And sometimes I feel guilty for how many times I threw you out the window in my fantasies. But I most certainly plan on making it up to you. — Christina Lauren

It is easy to be swept away by some overwhelming feeling, so it's helpful to remember that any stressful feeling is like a compassionate alarm clock that says, "You're caught in the dream." Depression, pain, and fear are gifts that say, "Sweetheart, take a look at your thinking right now. You're living in a story that isn't true for you. — Byron Katie

The majority in this country have not seen anything wrong with Zuma. I go with the overwhelming feeling of this country. If the majority say, 'Zuma, do this,' I will do it. — Jacob Zuma

At his age, it can be overwhelming and painful to harbor a thought accompanied by too much nostalgia. Not that he wanted to. Mabel, in her final years, had stopped listening to music. The songs of her teenage years brought her back to people and feelings of that time - people she could never see again and sensations that were no longer coming. It was too much for her. There are people who can manage such things. There are those of us who can no longer walk, but can close our eyes and remember a summer hike through a field, or the feeling of cool grass beneath our feet, and smile. Who still have the courage to embrace the past, and give it life and a voice in the present. But Mabel was not one of those people. Maybe she lacked that very form of courage. Or maybe her humanity was so complete, so expansive, that she would be crushed by her capacity to imagine the love that was gone. — Derek B. Miller

Actually, time had always been passing. I had just managed to avoid thinking about it very much. It would be hard for me to recapture that feeling - life wasn't so easy anymore. Small things pricked my heart. In those early days, I lived in a world of overwhelming sensations; it was like I had just fallen out of love. — Banana Yoshimoto

As long as this exists, and that should be forever, I know that there will be solace for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances. I firmly believe that nature can bring comfort to all who suffer.
Oh, who knows, perhaps it won't be long before I can share this overwhelming feeling of happiness with someone who feels the same as I do. — Anne Frank

... brotherhood of the firstborn, which can be both a blessing and a curse: the overwhelming attention to the detail of their lives and development. The expectations that run too high: being the bridge between adults and children, one foot in either place and the accompanying hollow lonely feeling of being nowhere. — Whitney Otto

But he had a niggling horror Lily might expire if he wasn't there watching over her. He knew it was irrational. But the feeling was overwhelming. — Grace Walton

Surrounding the two of them was the love they shared but also an overwhelming feeling of fear
fear of a future filled with the emptiness which would consume them if they remained apart. A fear of a future of being separated forever, and it gripped both of their hearts, demanding preventative action. — Madison Thorne Grey

He walked on without resting. He had a terrible longing for some distraction, but he did not know what to do, what to attempt. A new overwhelming sensation was gaining more and more mastery over him every moment; this was an immeasurable, almost physical, repulsion for everything surrounding him, an obstinate, malignant feeling of hatred. All who met him were loathsome to him - he loathed their faces, their movements, their gestures. If anyone had addressed him, he felt that he might have spat at him or bitten him ... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

We made love for a long time, and he whispered how much he'd missed me, and how beautiful I was, and how lucky he felt that we were together. And though I felt all those things, no words came out of my mouth. The feel of his body was taking my breath away, but that wasn't the reason I didn't say anything. At this moment, I felt as if I was in a dream, and I never wanted it to end. I wanted to feel him and touch him and hear him breathe and look in his eyes, and there wasn't one word I could say thatwouldn't take away from the overwhelming sense of passion I was feeling at this very moment. "Are you okay?" Drew asked me. "Yeah, why?" I whispered. "Because you're crying," he said, wiping tears from my eyes. "No, I'm not." He gave me a gentle smile. "Yes, you are. Tell me why." I looked into his eyes so directly that I almost felt like I was trying to look into his soul. And then I whispered, "I love you," and I realized that for the first time in my life, I actually meant it. — Jackie Pilossoph

Say anything you want against The Seventh Seal. My fear of death - this infantile fixation of mine - was, at that moment, overwhelming. I felt myself in contact with death day and night, and my fear was tremendous. When I finished the picture, my fear went away. I have the feeling simply of having painted a canvas in an enormous hurry - with enormous pretension but without any arrogance. I said, 'Here is a painting; take it, please. — Ingmar Bergman

At such moments of extreme panic and anguish you do manage that trick with time: you are at last free from the illusion that time is linear.
In panic, time stops: past, present and future exist as a single overwhelming force. You then, perversely, want time to appear to run forwards because the 'future' is the only place you can see an escape from this intolerable overload of feeling. But at such moments time doesn't move. And if time isn't running, then all events that we think of as past or future are actually happening simultaneously. That is the really terrifying thing. And you are subsumed. You're buried, as beneath an avalanche, by the weight of simultaneous events. — Sebastian Faulks

I had that overwhelming feeling I get when I'm about to give up on a plan, that big rush of air when I realize that my stroke of genius has flaws, and I don't have the brains or energy to fix them. — Gillian Flynn

Did the walls of the barn start to tremble
With a glory they could not contain?
Did anyone wake with the feeling
Of peace that they could not explain?
Oh the love must have been overwhelming
As it warmed everyone in it's flow
For all of the earth is still telling
of 2000 Decembers ago. — Joy Williams

Geekiness is that feeling of overwhelming passion for that thing in life that you focus on. Whether it be a nephew's first few steps or the timbre in one's voice when discussing the latest Cohen brothers film. — Harry Knowles

Let today be the day you control your emotions. Don't let them get the best of you. Whatever you are feeling right now should not be overwhelming. Don't allow others to dampen your spirit. You are entitled to enjoy peace. — Amaka Imani Nkosazana

I played on this soccer team, called Hollywood United, and there were a lot of old ex-international pro-players. We played this benefit match at the Rose Bowl, and the crowd streamed in. It's so nerve-wracking to go out into a stadium, feeling a billion eyes upon you when you mess up your touches. That's an overwhelming environment. — Donal Logue

This morning, as Charlotte approached the brick facade of Hartnett, she found herself overcome with a great sense of dread. It hit her with a strange and sudden force, and she had an overwhelming urge to turn back, get into bed and not go out for about three weeks. She stopped in her tracks. The feeling itself was alarming to Charlotte - was she sensing something? Something dangerous? And was it something supernatural or just middle school? Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference. — Anne Ursu

The potential, for anything, was overwhelming to a degree that bothered him. It wasn't, he thought, the idea of power. It certainly wasn't that nervous feeling T.C. would get in the pit of his stomach when he knew he had an incredible opportunity in front of him, that amazing brief pause before an act of creation. This was something else. Something to fear and respect. — Adam P. Knave

His ordeal has stripped away every bit of himself and leaves him feeling completely exposed to his Enemy. He has no way to know when the next full-scale attack will come, only that it will and that he cannot hide or protect himself from it.
Yet even in Frodo's darkness, with the fiery Ring as the only illumination he senses, there is still deep union between him and God. Evil continually forces its way into the hobbit's soul, but God is already there to strengthen him in his struggle to keep the demonic power from overwhelming him completely. As Frodo burns upon the kindled wheel, he becomes a candle set alight by both Light and Dark, a figure 'clothed in flame' (LOTR, 890), as Sam saw by the red light in the Tower chamber. The combination of this torment, God's love for him, and his own love for his world consume him in 'a holy sacrifice, truly pleasing to God' (Rom. 12:1). — Anne Marie Gazzolo

The inner planets came out to the black with an understanding that they were soldiers sent to a foreign land. Bull remembered the feeling from when he'd first shipped out: the sense that his home was behind him. For the inners, the expansion out into the solar system had always had the military at its core. The Belters didn't have that. They were the natives here. The forces that had brought their ancestors out to the Belt had roots in trade, commerce, and the overwhelming promise of freedom. The OPA had begun its life more like a labor union than a nation. The difference was subtle but powerful, and it showed in strange ways. — James S.A. Corey

People who struggle with overwhelming emotions often feel vulnerable. At any point, the smallest trigger can lead to a tidal wave of emotions that leaves them feeling confused, angry, alone, hopeless, and in pain. — Matthew McKay

The next dish given him was spinach with hard-boiled eggs, while Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, as an invalid, had jelly and milk. When with a preoccupied face she touched the jelly with a spoon and then began languidly eating it, sipping milk, and he heard her swallowing, he was possessed by such an overwhelming aversion that it made his head tingle. He recognised that such a feeling would be an insult even to a dog, but he was angry, not with himself but with Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, for arousing such a feeling, and he understood why lovers sometimes murder their mistresses. He would not murder her, of course, but if he had been on a jury now, he would have acquitted the murderer. — Anton Chekhov

the intimacy of the kiss, that feeling of euphoria that comes with that kiss that is right and real, that kiss that swallows you up, starting from the curl in your toes to the fine hairs on the back of your neck, that kiss that leaves you panting for air, that makes each part of your body quiver as you melt against him, that makes you suck his bottom lip into your mouth with the overwhelming urge to bite it. Sometimes hard. That. That kind of kiss. — R.B. O'Brien

A familiar sensation sparks inside me, the one I had a few years ago, the one that hurts because it's dangerous and overwhelming. Knowing how it is to truly love someone is torturous. You try to bury that feeling. So you become lonely, deprived, and when you sense anything remotely like it, the emotion comes back to haunt you. It's one sick fucking game. — Danielle Esplin

The feeling to bury one's head in a ditch can be an overwhelming one, but Annwyl fought it all the same. — G.A. Aiken

What man ever openly apologizes for slander? It is not so much a feeling of slander as it is that of a massive lie, a misdeed not only to the slandered but also to those manipulated in the process. He has made them all, every one, his enemies, thereupon he is so overwhelmed with guilt that he will deny it until his grave. — Criss Jami

Our culture believes strong individuals can transcend their circumstances. I myself don't much enjoy books by Hardy or Dreiser or Wharton, where the outside world is so strong, so overwhelming, that the individual hasn't a chance. I get impatient, I keep feeling that somehow the deck is stacked unfairly. That is the point, of course, but my feeling is that if that's true, I don't want to play. I prefer to move to another table where I can retain my illusion, if illusion it be, that I'm working only against only probabilities, and have a chance to win. Then if you lose, you can blame it on your own poor playing. That is called a tragic flaw, and like guilt, it's very comforting. You can go on believing that there really is a right way, and you just didn't find it. — Marilyn French

The 'Rise, Rebel, Resist' video is a reflection of the outrage the American people are feeling at the absurd hypocrisy, and overwhelming nonsense and balderdash plaguing Washington D.C. It uses a bit of satire and a bit of wishful thinking to form this powerful amalgam of imagery that nourishes and empowers the living art of the song. Our message is clear: Either these elected officials do their job and protect the rights and lives of ALL Americans or be prepared to face the consequences. — Otep Shamaya

Augustine's feeling of fragmentation has its modern corollary in the way many contemporary young people are plague by a frantic fear of missing out. The world has provided them with a superabundance of neat things to do. Naturally, they hunger to size every opportunity and taste every experience. They want to grab all the goodies in front of them. They want to say yes to every product in the grocery store. They are terrified of missing out on anything that looks exciting. But by not renouncing any of them they spread themselves thin. What's worse, they turn themselves into goodie seekers, greedy for every experience and exclusively focused on self. If you live in this way, you turn into a shrewd tactician, making a series of cautious semicommitments without really surrendering to some larger purpose. You lose the ability to sau a hundred noes for the sake of one overwhelming and fulfilling yes. — David Brooks

Depressions and melancholy are often a cover for tremendous greed.
At the beginning of an analysis there is often a depressed state of resignation-life has no meaning, there is no feeling of being in life. An exaggerated state can develop into complete lameness. Quite young people give the impression of having the resignation of a bitter old man or woman. When you dig into such a black mood you find that behind it there is overwhelming greed-for being loved, for being very rich, for having the right partner, for being the top dog, etc.
Behind such a melancholic resignation you will often discover in the darkness a recurring theme which makes things very difficult, namely if you give such people one bit of hope, the lion opens its mouth and you have to withdraw, and then they put the lid on again, and so it goes on, back and forth. — Marie-Louise Von Franz

The next aspect of the mystical feeling is even more difficult to assimilate into our ordinary practical intelligence. It is the overwhelming sense that everything that happens - everything that I or anybody else has ever done - is part of a harmonious design and that there is no error at all. — Alan W. Watts

And when the sea swallowed up the shore and the waves heaved under the ship and the blue horizon encircled us, I immediately felt an overwhelming intimacy with the sea. I knew this green, infinite giant, as though it were roving back and forth within my ribs. The whole of the journey I savored that feeling of being nowhere, alone, before and behind me either eternity or nothingness. — Tayeb Salih

I suppose everyone has had that ghastly feeling at one time or another of being urged by some overwhelming force to do some absolutely blithering act. — P.G. Wodehouse

Just as a child, before I ever knew what ballet was, there was something in me where I was always searching for something structured, something that was bigger than me, and something so historical that I could be a part of. I didn't find that until I stepped into the ballet world, and it was overwhelming, the feeling of being a part of something that's bigger than you. — Misty Copeland

When I lived in New York and went to Chinatown, I learned that these flavors and their meanings were actually a foundation of ancient Chinese medicine.
Salty translated to fear and the frantic energy that tries to compensate for or hide it.
Sweet was the first flavor we recognized from our mother's milk, and to which we turned when we were worried and unsure or depressed.
Sour usually meant anger and frustration.
Bitter signified matters of the heart, from simply feeling unloved to the almost overwhelming loss of a great love. Most spices, along with coffee and chocolate, had some bitterness in their flavor profile. Even sugar, when it cooked too long, turned bitter. But to me, spice was for grief, because it lingered longest. — Judith Fertig

No one stepping for the first time into a room made of books can know instinctively how to behave, what is expected, what is promised, what is allowed. One may be overcome by horror
at the cluster or the vastness, the stillness, the mocking reminder of everything one doesn't know, the surveillance
and some of that overwhelming feeling may cling on, even after the rituals and conventions are learned, the geography mapped, and the natives found friendly. — Alberto Manguel

Children change you. You have this overwhelming feeling of responsibility, of love - they're everything. They're yours. You know when you're cuddling them, cradling them, and you can smell their hair. I love that. — Philip Glenister

I suspect almost every day that I'm living for nothing, I get depressed and I feel self-destructive and a lot of the time I don't like myself. What's more, the proximity of other humans often fills me with overwhelming anxiety, but I also feel that this precarious sentience is all we've got and, simplistic as it may seem, it's a person's duty to the potentials of his own soul to make the best of it. We're all stuck on this often miserable earth where life is essentially tragic, but there are glints of beauty and bedrock joy that come shining through from time to precious time to remind anybody who cares to see that there is something higher and larger than ourselves. And I am not talking about your putrefying gods, I am talking about a sense of wonder about life itself and the feeling that there is some redemptive factor you must at least search for until you drop dead of natural causes. — Lester Bangs

The people in their overwhelming majority are so feminine by nature and attitude that sober reasoning determines their thoughts and actions far less than emotion and feeling.

And this sentiment is not complicated, but very simple and all of a piece. It does not have multiple shadings; it has a positive and a negative; love or hate, right or wrong, truth or lie, never half this way and half that way, never partially, or that kind of thing. — Adolf Hitler

He moved his arm so that she could rest against his chest. "All the time. The FBI loves
overwhelming people with manpower and firepower."
"Good." In her drowsy state, this suddenly was very important to her, knowing that he was as safe
as possible while doing his extraspecial agent thing.
Her eyes felt heavy, so she decided to shut them for just a teeny tiny moment. The last thing she
remembered was feeling Vaughn's fingers stroking up and down on her arm in a light, soothing caress. — Julie James

The feeling of being trapped, of being helpless against his strength, his lust, and what my body needed was almost overwhelming. My eyes shuttered closed at the effort of not struggling in his harsh grasp. He whispered against my face, and I could not focus enough to see him. "Do you want to ride the storm?" His breath was hot against my skin. His voice promised no gentleness, no compromise. I knew the kind of sex he was offering, and the thought of it tightened things low in my body, drew another small sound from my throat. "Yes," I whispered, "yes." The roll of thunder echoed down the hallway, shuddering between the stone walls. The sound seemed to vibrate out of his body and into mine as if my body were a tuning fork struck against the rim of some great metal cup. His voice growled against my skin, with the taste of thunder in it. "Good," he said and forced me to my knees. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Tess took a deep breath. 'You are not marrying me for love, Lord Mayne. Nor-as far as I can see-due to any overwhelming feeling of a less...less proper nature.' She could feel color rising into her cheeks.
'Now that's not true,' Mayne said. There was a hint of wicked laughter in his eyes, and his fingers tightened on hers. 'I feel quite improperly toward you.'
Goodness, but he was attractive when he wasn't hedging, when he was being honest. 'Are you not disturbed by the fact that we do not feel warmer emotions for each other?' she asked him.
'I would be disturbed if we /did/ ... I do not wish for a tempestuous marriage, although I am quite certain that there will be sufficient warmth between us.'
'And in your estimation, tempests must accompany love,' she said, raising an eyebrow. — Eloisa James

I had no idea what had happened, or what was going to happen, other than the overwhelming feeling that I was in some deep doo-doo. — D. Randall Blythe

And really, a formal ceremony and a piecce of paper wasn't what made a marriage. It was the feeling bursting apart my chest-the overwhelming sensation that I'd been cleaved in two at birth, and, miraculously, I'd managed to find my other half. And even more miraculously, he felt the same. — S.C. Stephens

Sometimes it's impossible for mere words to encompass how you really feel about someone. There's nothing you could ever possibly say to adequately emulate the effect of that person's presence in your life. It's an overwhelming, indescribable feeling that consumes your heart and captivates your soul. It simply just is. — L.B. Simmons

The more subtle inheritance of my strange childhood was the feeling, which we all shared to some extent, of believing we were never quite going about things correctly. Had I said the right thing? Had I worn the right clothes? Was I attractive? These questions were unsettling and self-absorbing, even overwhelming at times, and remained so throughout much of my adult life, until, at last, I grew impatient with dwelling on the past. — Katharine Graham

It was not so much a feeling of being insulted, but an overwhelming pain for the people of my native land. We were not treated by our own government as proper human beings, and consequently some outsiders did not regard us as the same kind of humans as themselves. I thought of the old observation that Chinese lives were cheap, and one Englishman's amazement that his Chinese servant should find a toothache unbearable. — Jung Chang

May I say that I am delighted that my favorite alpha is feeling better. Why, you'll be running recklessly into danger against overwhelming odds anytime now. — Ilona Andrews

Will seeing me be a problem?"
While there's this overwhelming voice screaming yes in the back of my mind, there's a smile twisting on my face and I bring my hands together in front of me, feeling suddenly shy. Did he just say ... ? "So we're seeing each other?"
Isaiah touches an earring. "Yeah. I guess we are."
My head bobs back and forth because I so need more. "Like more than friends?"
"We can be friends if you want. But ... "
"But what?" My stomach begins to plummet. Did I misread all of this?
His gray eyes bore into mine with an intensity I've never seen from anyone before. "But I want more."
"More?" I whisper.
"I want to kiss you again. — Katie McGarry

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I never leave the house without [my Santa hat]. In fact, I pretty much never leave my room without it. I honestly don't know how this habit started and believe me, I'd break myself of it if I could, but I'm a little bit OCD about the Santa hat. Whenever I try to put it away, I get this horrible, overwhelming feeling that somehow Christmas will be destroyed if I do. — Kieran Scott

The feeling of support I got was pretty overwhelming. That energy and optimism was something I had been missing and didn't even know it. — Matt Sharp