Cyril Connolly Quotes

Letting an emotion move through you is healthy. Letting an emotion define you is not.

Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion.

When you try to cool down hot emotions, what tends to happen is that you end up either repressing them or losing them altogether. Neither is desirable. Without emotion, much social interaction loses its meaning or changes for the worse.

The way I work emotionally is: I don't ever try to cry. I try not to, which is what for me produces organic emotion.

The problem with emotion was that it was clearly something important, but-at least according to the old philosophy-it was something to overcome.

Reason without passion is sterile, but passion without reason is hysteria.

Emotion is the foundation of reason.

For my part, I think we need more emotion, not less. But I think, too, that we need to educate people in how to feel. Emotionalism is not the same as emotion. We cannot cut out emotion - in the economy of the human body, it is the limbic, not the neural, highway that takes precedence. We are not robots...but we act as though all our problems would be solved if only we had no emotions to cloud our judgement.

For Reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and Passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.

We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is to learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.

By nature, most people are controlled by their emotions. They feel sad, so they look sad.

Natural knowledge has not forgone emotion. It has simply taken for itself new ground of emotion, under impulsion from and in sacrifice to that one of its 'values', Truth.

A man who cannot get angry is like a stream that cannot overflow, that is always turbid. Sometimes indignation is as good as a thunderstorm in summer, clearing and cooling the air.

The more we ignore our emotions, the more likely they are to wield a powerful influence over us.

In this world, man has two significant possessions: intelligence and emotion. These two possessions govern our day-to-day life. But very often we see that emotion (ego) gets the upper hand in our life. We know that even if someone is extremely intelligent, when his emotion comes to the fore it will devour him. He is compelled to do what his emotion asks him to do.

I'm British. I don't really have access to my emotions on a daily basis.

Life without emotions is like an engine without fuel.

It's all emotion. But there's nothing wrong with emotion. When we are in love, we are not rational; we are emotional. When we are on vacation, we are not rational; we are emotional. When we are happy, we are not [rational]. In fact, in more cases than not, when we are rational, we're actually unhappy. Emotion is good; passion is good. Being into what we're into, provided that it's a healthy pursuit, it's a good thing.

Humor is an excellent method of keeping a tight rein on unproductive displays of emotion.

Anger is meant to be acted upon. It is not meant to be acted out.

Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion. Our brains merely register and act upon what is telegraphed to them by our bodily experience. Intellect is to emotion as our clothes are to our bodies; we could not very well have civilized life without clothes, but we would be in a poor way if we had only clothes without bodies.

When emotions dominate, maturity and wisdom deteriorate

The world is ruled, and the destiny of civilization is established, by the human emotions.

I am learning how to be angry and sad and lonely and joyful and excited and afraid and happy.

How difficult it is to reach anything approaching a moderate and relatively calm point of view in the midst of one's emotions.