“We also know, of course, that human beings are not perfectly rational calculators. Our behavior and decisions are based on a mixture of calculation, emotions, and internalized norms, with calculation often a minor component of the cocktail.”
Source: Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth
“One exercise that can help you address this trap involves making a list of all the ways, including emotional ones, in which you feel dependent on your partner, then making another list of big or small steps you might take to begin to become more independent. These lists can guide you in focusing your energy in the directions you need to go.”
Source: Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
“You’re a survivor of emotional abuse—and you can escape this trap. Just remain calm, patient, and always kind to yourself. Someday you will be able to talk about this experience eloquently and believably.”
Source: Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other Toxic People
“The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.”
“One must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible. I'm alive and it's not my fault, which means I must somehow go on living the best I can, without bothering anybody, until I die.'
'But what makes you live? With such thoughts, you'll sit without moving, without undertaking anything...'
'Life won't leave one alone as it is.”
Source: War and Peace
“Most of the time we approach life with an armored front for two reasons: 1) We're not comfortable with emotions and equate vulnerability with weakness, and/or 2) Our experiences of trauma have taught us that vulnerability is actually dangerous. Violence and oppression have made our soft front a liability, and we struggle to find a place emotionally and physically safe enough to be vulnerable.”
Source: Braving the Wilderness
“Mind is like space because it has no limitation. When there are no clouds, when it is completely clear, space is like our "ordinary" state of mind. Then, all of a sudden, clouds come from nowhere. Our emotional problems and mental chaos are like the clouds. When they take over, we can't see space anymore, we only see the clouds. When they take over, we can't see space any more, we only see the clouds. However, space never goes away, it's always there. It's just our minds getting into darkness so that, for us, the clouds become our only reality. It means that we give more solidity to our emotional upheavals, to all the things going on in our minds, so that they become "real" for us than the true essence of the mind. And as we have a physical form, when we get very emotional, the end result may be tears rolling down our cheeks, just like rain falling form the clouds.”
Source: Finding Peace: Meditation and Wisdom for Modern Times
“It is only by finding and healing these old, original traumas that the narcissist has been using against you that you can break out of the insane emotional prison he or she has trapped you in. The irony is, this necessity brings with it an incredible opportunity: it can enable your evolution into the version of yourself that you have always wanted to be. It can allow you to free yourself at last from those wounded parts of your inner being that have prevented you from becoming your highest and best self.”
Source: You Can Thrive After Narcissistic Abuse
“Nothing is more repulsive to me than the literary man who must immediately display every emotion and every experience to its best advantage and stick it on paper.”
Source: Copse 125: A Chronicle from the Trench Warfare of 1918
“Don’t shout, Yen, don’t be aggressive. And don’t drag up that story
from Vengerberg, we swore not to go back to it, after all. I don’t bear a
grudge against you, Yen, I’m not reproaching you, am I? I know you
can’t be judged by ordinary standards. And the fact that I’m saddened…
the fact that I know I’m losing you… is cellular memory. The atavistic
remnants of feelings in a mutant purged of emotion—”
Source: Sword of Destiny