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All emotions are, in essence, impulses to act, the instant plans for handling life that evolution has instilled in us. The very root of the word emotion is motere, the Latin verb “to move,” plus the prefix “e-” to connote “move away,” suggesting that a tendency to act is implicit in every emotion.
In a very real sense we have two minds, one that thinks and one that feels.
Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.
People with well-developed emotional skills are also more likely to be content and effective in their lives, mastering the habits of mind that foster their own productivity; people who cannot marshal some control over their emotional life fight inner battles that sabotage their ability for focused work and clear thought.
“Anger is never without a reason, but seldom a good one.”
“Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee”
Defensiveness in a listener takes the form of ignoring or immediately rebutting the spouse’s complaint, reacting to it as though it were an attack rather than an attempt to change behavior.
Leadership is not domination, but the art of persuading people to work toward a common goal.
Too often people criticize only when things boil over, when they get too angry to contain themselves.
The key to a high group IQ is social harmony.
“Who taught you all this, Doctor?” The reply came promptly: “Suffering.”
For the patient, any encounter with a nurse or physician can be a chance for reassuring information, comfort, and solace—or, if handled unfortunately, an invitation to despair.
The element of helplessness is what makes a given event subjectively overwhelming.
One way to get at the picture frozen in the amygdala is through art, which itself is a medium of the unconscious. The emotional brain is highly attuned to symbolic meanings and to the mode Freud called the “primary process”:
