We feign pity when we want to demonstrate our ascendancy over feelings of hostility: but usually in vain. Whenever we notice this,there is an accompanying surge in those hostile sensations.
That's why I always question this sense. The feeling of home really requires a lot of trust. It requires you to identify with it, which I always find myself very contradictory to.
How much more intense is the excitement wrought in the feelings of a crowd by the contemplation of human agony, than that brought about by the most appalling spectacles of inanimate matter.
There is no better feeling than when you write something you know is a piece of you and that, at some point, is going to communicate with someone else.
Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.
There's no use in comparing one's feelings between one day and the next; you must allow a reasonable interval, for the direction of change to show itself.
A well-composed song strikes the mind and softens the feelings, and produces a greater effect than a moral work, which convinces our reason, but does not warm our feelings, nor effect the slightest alteration in our habits
The charitable say in effect, 'I seem to have more than I need and you seem to have less than you need. I would like to share my excess with you.' Fine, if my excess is tangible, money or goods, and fine if not, for I learned that to be charitable with gestures and words can bring enormous joy and repair injured feelings.