Witnessing Emotions Quotes & Sayings

And that is why, when he finally did come across the street, I lit my cigarette with my lighter - not to make him feel like a fool who had fallen for a trick, but rather because he had said, 'you had better luck with matches,' when in fact I had not. It was not the matches that brought him across the street. It was the matches that kept him on the bench. — Adam Levin

As we all know from witnessing the consuming jealousy of husbands who are never faithful, people do not confine themselves to the emotions to which they are entitled. — Quentin Crisp

I successfully chloroformed a hedgehog that was entangled in the tennis net and so managed to release it. — Agatha Christie

Most people assume that meditation is all about stopping thoughts, getting rid of emotions, somehow controlling the mind. But actually it's ... about stepping back, seeing the thought clearly, witnessing it coming and going. — Andy Puddicombe

Meditation is basically the process of witnessing: looking from your centre all that is happening. Many things are happening on the outside - the noise of the train far away; something is happening in you body - your knees are hurting - right? Your mind is churning many thoughts, that 'What am I doing here?' Your heart is feeling many emotions, you have waited for this moment for so long. There is joy in the heart, a certain ecstasy, a mood, a receptivity. All those things have to be watched very minutely. — Rajneesh

[reading a work in translation] is like viewing a piece of Flemish tapestry on the wrong side. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Every temptation is an opportunity of our getting nearer to God. — John Quincy Adams

You have to be luxurious nude. It's difficult to move in the nude in front of a mirror. It's much easier to move when you're dressed. But if you can walk around in the nude easily in front of your man, if you can be luxurious in the nude, then you've really got it. — Sonia Rykiel

She couldn't help being a weasel. She was born that way. — Tessa Dare

Sometimes, it is necessary for me to step back from my emotions and my life. I need to be the outsider looking in, sitting in the objective chair, as a witness. As opposed to being so entangled in my feelings, that they become a noose around my neck. — Jaeda DeWalt

[O]ne could translate the 555 pages of The Social System into about 150 pages of straightforward English. The result would not be very impressive. — C. Wright Mills

If I were capable of human emotions, tears of joy would have been streaming down my face. You know that feeling you experience upon witnessing the birth of your first child? It was like that, only a thousand times better, because free burritos were involved. — Nathan Rabin

Ego means self-identification with thinking, to be trapped in thought, which means to have a mental image of "me" based on thought and emotions. So ego is there in the absence of a witnessing presence. — Eckhart Tolle

I am not easy to love but I am well loved. I try to love well in return. — Roxane Gay

What vast funds of indifference society possesses — Gustave Flaubert

The best stories proceed from a mysterious truth-seeking impulse that narrative has when revised extensively; they are complex and baffling and ambiguous; they tend to make us slower to act, rather than quicker. They make us more humble, cause us to empathize with people we don't know, because they help us imagine these people, and when we imagine them - if the storytelling is good enough - we imagine them as being, essentially, like us. If the story is poor, or has an agenda, if it comes out of a paucity of imagination or is rushed, we imagine those other people as essentially unlike us: unknowable, inscrutable, incontrovertible. — George Saunders

Shot Dunyun: No bullshit, but I never leave the house without a mix for anything: Falling in love. Witnessing a death. Disappointment. Impatience. Traffic. I carry a mix for any human condition. Anything really good or bad happens to me, and my way not to overreact - like, to distance my emotions - is to locate the exact perfect sound track for that moment. Even the night Rant died, my automatic first thought was: Philip Glass's Violin Concerto II, or Ravel's Piano Concerto in G Major? — Chuck Palahniuk

Becoming aware of the intense suffering of billions of animals, and of our own participation in that suffering, can bring up painful emotions: sorrow and grief for the animals; anger at the injustice and deception of the system; despair at the enormity of the problem; fear that trusted authorities and institutions are, in fact, untrustworthy; and guilt for having contributed to the problem. Bearing witness means choosing to suffer. Indeed, empathy is literally 'feeling with.' Choosing to suffer is particularly difficult in a culture that is addicted to comfort
a culture that teaches that pain should be avoided whenever possible and that ignorance is bliss. We can reduce our resistance to witnessing by valuing authenticity over personal pleasure, and integration over ignorance. — Melanie Joy

Yon Sun that sets upon the sea We follow in his flight; Farewell awhile to him and thee, My native land-Good Night! — Lord Byron