Emotions

"Je l'ai toujours dit et senti, la véritable jouissance ne se décrit point."

"Whether with Reason, or with Instinct blest, Know, all enjoy that pow'r which suits them best."

"Who can enjoy alone? Or all enjoying what contentment find?"

"Though throned in highest bliss Equal to God, and equally enjoying God-like fruition."

"For Solomon, he lived at ease, and full Of honour, wealth, high fare, aimed not beyond Higher design than to enjoy his state."

"All acts suppose certain dispositions, and habits of mind and heart, which may be in themselves states of enjoyment or of wretchedness, and which must be fruitful in other consequences besides those particular acts."

"Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes."

"Blessed are those that nought expect, For they shall not be disappointed."

"It's a different way to begin separating out nature and nurture, and to see how different this boy would be. But I have many times been asked if my children have followed me into research — it's something people subconsciously expect. For a clone, the pressure would be even greater. People would expect the clone to be like the original, and put expectations and limitations on them, and that's the reason why I don't like to use that technique. I think people should be wanted as individuals."

"It is a folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do."

"Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate."

"'Tis silence all, And pleasing expectation."

"Although I enter not, Yet round about the spot Sometimes I hover, And near the sacred gate, With longing eyes I wait, Expectant of her."

"'Tis expectation makes a blessing dear; Heaven were not heaven, if we knew what it were."

"Expectation whirls me round. The imaginary relish is so sweet That it enchants my sense."

"Promising is the very air o' the time; it opens the eyes of expectation: performance is ever the duller for his act; and, but in the plainer and simpler kind of people, the deed of saying is quite out of use."

"He hath indeed better bettered expectation than you must expect of me to tell you how."

"There have sat The live-long day, with patient expectation, To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome."

"Oft expectation fails and most oft there Where most it promises, and oft it hits Where hope is coldest and despair most fits."

"Evidence of the destructiveness of unrealistic expectations can be found in the literature on cognition and marriage. For example, people who feel that their relationship standards (e.g., how alike they believe they should be, the degree to which they should engage in acts of caring and concern for each other) are unmet are more inclined to report more negative cognitive and affective reactions to marital problems (Baucom et al., 1996). Further, research on relationship beliefs indicates that idealistic and unrealistic beliefs, like “mind reading is expected” (partners who truly care about and know one another should be able to sense each other’s needs and preferences without overt communication), “sexual perfectionism” (one must be a “perfect” sexual partner) and “disagreement is destructive” (disagreements in marriage are a sign of impending doom) are positively associated with marital distress (eidelson & Epstein, 1982; Epstein & Eidelson, 1981) and negatively associated with the desire to maintain the relationship (Eidelson & Epstein, 1982)."

"Blessed is he who expects nothing for he shall never be disappointed."

"I had also read on the face of surroundings some broken some disconnected some cracked expectations."

"PANDORA: What else remains for me? EPIMETHEUS: Youth, hope and love: To build a new life on a ruined life, To make the future fairer than the past, And make the past appear a troubled dream."

"In the nineteenth century, ... official Western medicine recognized drapetomania, the tendency of slaves to run away from their owners, as a disease. ... With hindsight, drapetomania is easily dismissed as a harmful fabrication of fictitious disease, in a culture violating human rights. Less easy is it to recognize harmful fabrications of our own era for what they are."

"Depression is melancholy minus its charms—the animation, the fits."

"Living with depression is like trying to keep your balance while you dance with a goat — it is perfectly sane to prefer a partner with a better sense of balance."

"Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression."

"My desolation does begin to make A better life."

"Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced. … It is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope. That very deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad. Sad hurts but it's a healthy feeling. It's a necessary thing to feel. Depression is very different."

"Helena Roerich, Letters II, (7 May 1938)"

"Because of the grave times, one should speak about the need for joy and of the terrible harm of any and all depression. Therefore I am quoting here a Discourse, useful for the entire group. "Even during the difficult days you know that strength issues from joy. I said long ago that 'joy is a special wisdom.' Verily so, because joy must be observed, discerned, and realized. Depressed people carry a cloud of miseries and woes. In this dark covering they cannot perceive joy. Because of this pall of sorrow people become blind and lose strength...They do not admit Our Help... As if no one ever told people about the harm of depression! Depressed people are said to be deprived of their share. Ponder these words. Who has deprived them of their inherent share? First of all they deprived themselves of any possibilities. They began their own destruction long ago. Discontent, malice, irritation cut off the path to joy. Dark thoughts deprived them of the source of strength. Selfhood prevented the discernment of joy. Egoism whispered, Joy lies only in personal gain. Thus the most fruitful joy was hidden behind ugly piles of depression. Those blinded by depression are the most pitiful of bipeds. (7 May 1938)"

"People here [in Congress] often think of depression as being sad; no matter what I tell other legislators, they don't know. They don't understand how it is emptiness, how it is a vast nothing."

"Can you help me remember how to smile Make it somehow all seem worthwhile How on earth did I get so jaded Life's mystery seems so faded I can go where no one else can go I know what no one else knows Here I am just drownin' in the rain With a ticket for a runaway train."

"Depressed or nominally euthymic people are easier for the authorities to control than exuberant life-lovers."

"Depressive or anxiety-ridden kids can't compete effectively against their peers. A tendency to low mood, and the spectrum of subordinate behaviour with which depression is associated, may have been genetically adaptive for low-status tribal weaklings on the African savannah. For depressive behaviour, contingently activated, can be a viable fallback strategy for stressed low-status tribal animals in an adverse social environment. This may explain why depressive disorders are so common. But a genetic predisposition to low spirits, or at least anything like unipolar depression as distinct from bipolarity, is not part of an optimal reproductive strategy for potential "winners". If intelligently engineered, a genetically enhanced sense of well-being is empowering. Its behavioural phenotypes are potentially far more adaptive than the predisposition to learned helplessness and behavioural despair characteristic of the depressive spectrum. So in the new reproductive era, pushy parents in particular are likely to shun depressive genotypes."

"What is the light that can dispel this ignorance of ours and remove all sorrows? A. The knowledge of the Four Noble Truths, as the Buddha called them... How can we escape the sufferings which result from unsatisfied desires and ignorant cravings? A. By complete conquest over, and destruction of, this eager thirst for life and its pleasures, which causes sorrow.... By following the Noble Eight-fold Path which the Buddha discovered and pointed out...The man who keeps these... in mind and follows them will be free from sorrow and ultimately reach salvation."

"Am I a rock? What is it with me, that I am not stirred by this liquor and these songs?"

"The melancholic errs by turning against his own ego all the critical energies that ought to be directed outward against the powers of the status quo. ... Encouraged to draw all of his aggressions inward, away from the true source of discontent, the compliant melancholic sets up a superegoic agency harboring the ego’s own former rage against the object. ... Introjection becomes a form of deflected critique. Meanwhile, the berated and debased ego, busy with its own internal insufficiencies and thoroughly discouraged from political activism, is not only fully censured but also is fashioned into a willing, productive—if ultimately impotent—participant in society. ... The ideal subject under capitalism is melancholic."

"Males with depressed roommates may end up feeling a bit blue themselves, according to Daniel Eisenberg, an assistant professor of public health at the University of Michigan who recently led a survey of 1,600 freshmen at two universities — a public one in the Midwest and a private one in the Northeast — on the issue. He found no such carryover for female students. This mood contagion seems to occur when the student keeps his feelings bottled up, Dr. Eisenberg says. And it’s only a mild case; roommates typically don’t develop their friends’ more serious conditions. “It’s not like you catch a mental-health cold,” he says. “People are resilient. They have a lot of coping strategies.”"

"Buddhism’s famed Four Truths are called noble because they liberate us from suffering."

"Depression is the inability to construct a future."

"Abomination of desolation."

"No one is so accursed by fate, No one so utterly desolate, But some heart, though unknown, Responds unto his own."

"The way nerves talk to each other, and communicate, is through the secretion of a chemical called a neurotransmitter, which stimulates the circuit to be activated. And when this regulation of chemical neurotransmission is disturbed, you have the alterations in the functions that those brain areas are supposed to, to mediate. So in a condition like depression, or mania, which occurs in bipolar disorder, you have a disturbance in the neurochemistry in the part of the brain that regulates emotion."

"How often, for example, a young man desires affection from someone who cannot give it to him, who has it not to give! From such a desire as that comes often a great deal of sadness, jealousy and much other ill-feeling. You will say that such a desire is natural; undoubtedly it is, and affection which is returned is a great source of happiness. Yet if it cannot be returned, a man should have the strength to accept the situation, and not allow sorrow to be caused by the unsatisfied desire."

"The First Truth is an assertion that all manifested life is sorrow, unless man knows how to live it... the Cause of Sorrow is always desire. If a man has no desires, if he is not striving for place or power or wealth, then he is equally tranquil whether the wealth or position comes or whether it goes. He remains unruffled and serene.... Being human, he will of course wish for this or that, but always mildly and gently, so that he does not allow himself to be disturbed... the Noble Eightfold Path... can be taken at all levels. The man in the world, even the uneducated man, can take it in its lowest aspects and find a way to peace and comfort through it. And yet the highest philosopher may also take it and interpret it at his level and learn very much from it."

"A low serotonin level . . . can dry up the wellsprings of life’s happiness, withering a person’s interest in his existence and increasing the risk of depression and suicide."

"Man delights not me: no, nor woman neither, though, by your smiling, you seem to say so."

"Although previously the monoamine systems were considered to be responsible for the development of major depressive disorder (MDD), the available evidence to date does not support a direct causal relationship with MDD. There is no simple direct correlation of serotonin or norepinephrine levels in the brain and mood. In other words, after a half-century of research, the chemical-imbalance hypothesis as promulgated by the drug companies that manufacture SSRIs and other antidepressants is not only without clear and consistent support, but has been disproved by experimental evidence."

"Sometimes, my heart hurts so much, I beat it with my fists. I try to run. But you cannot run away from this. You cannot run from it. Wherever you run, it waits for you. Even when you think you have escaped it, it is there, where you have run to. It waits for you, to ambush you. It is like those vines called lianas, those tropical creepers that grow around you and strangle you. You cut off one branch, but there is another that grows. You leap over the wall of one ghetto and find yourself in another ghetto."