C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Feeling
A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind.
Feeling comes before reflection.
I would help others, out of a fellow-feeling.
The feelings, like flowers and butterflies, last longer the later they are delayed.
Life is a comedy to him who thinks, and tragedy to him who feels.
Though there is nothing more dangerous, yet there is nothing more ordinary, than for weak saints to make their sense and feeling the judge of their condition. We must strive to walk by faith.
Every human feeling is greater and larger than the exciting cause.
Some feelings are to mortals given with less of earth in them than heaven.
A man deep wounded may feel too much pain to feel much anger.
What unknown seas of feeling lie in man, and will from time to time break through!
He best shall paint them who shall feel them most.
Feeling in the young precedes philosophy, and often acts with a more certain aim.
The head best leaves to the heart what the heart alone divines.
He thought as a sage, though he felt as a man.
The heart that is soonest awake to the flowers is always the first to be touched by the thorns.
Fine feelings, without vigor of reason, are in the situation of the extreme feather of a peacock’s tail—dragging in the mud.
Our feelings were given us to excite to action, and when they end in themselves, they are impressed to no one good purpose that I know of.
Feelings come and go like light troops following the victory of the present; but principles, like troops of the line, are undisturbed, and stand fast.
Some people carry their hearts in their heads; very many carry their heads in their hearts. The difficulty is to keep them apart, and yet both actively working together.
My friends, does God invite you? If He does, why don’t you accept the invitation? If you want to come, just come along, and don’t be talking about feeling. Do you think Lazarus had any feeling when Christ called him out of the sepulchre?
Tears never yet saved a soul. Hell is full of weepers weeping over lost opportunities, perhaps over the rejection of an offered Saviour. Your Bible does not say, “Weep, and be saved.” It says, “Believe, and be saved.” Faith is better than feeling.
“Verily I say unto you, he that heareth My word and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life.” My friend, that is worth more than all the feeling you can have in a lifetime.
A word, a look, which at one time would make no impression, at another time wounds the heart; and like a shaft flying with the wind pierces deep, which, with its own natural force, would scarce have reached the object aimed at.
The heart of man is older than his head. The first-born is sensitive, but blind—his younger brother has a cold, but all-comprehensive glance. The blind must consent to be led by the clear-sighted if he would avoid falling.
The last, best fruit which comes to perfection, even in the kindliest soul, is tenderness toward the hard, forbearance toward the unforbearing, warmth of heart toward the cold, philanthropy toward the misanthropic.
It is far more easy not to feel, that always to feel rightly, and not to act, than always to act well. For he that is determined to admire only that which is beautiful imposes a much harder task upon himself than he that, being determined not to see that which is the contrary, effects it by simply shutting his eyes.
Some feelings are quite untranslatable; no language has yet been found for them. They gleam upon us beautifully through the dim twilight of fancy, and yet when we bring them close to us, and hold them up to the light of reason, lose their beauty all at once, as glow worms which gleam with such a spiritual light in the shadows of evening, when brought in where the candles are lighted, are found to be only worms like so many others.
Feelings are like chemicals—the more you analyze them the worse they smell. So it is best not to stir them up very much, only enough to convince one’s self that they are offensively wrong, and then look away as far as possible, out of one’s self, for a purifying power; and that we know can only come from Him who holds our hearts in His hands, and can turn us whither He will.