#emotion

As a rule, we don't like to feel to sad or lonely or depressed. So why do we like music (or books or movies) that evoke in us those same negative emotions? Why do we choose to experience in art the very feelings we avoid in real life? Aristotle deals with a similar question in his analysis of tragedy. Tragedy, after all, is pretty gruesome. […] There's Sophocles's Oedipus, who blinds himself after learning that he has killed his father and slept with his mother. Why would anyone watch this stuff? Wouldn't it be sick to enjoy watching it? […] Tragedy's pleasure doesn't make us feel "good" in any straightforward sense. On the contrary, Aristotle says, the real goal of tragedy is to evoke pity and fear in the audience. Now, to speak of the pleasure of pity and fear is almost oxymoronic. But the point of bringing about these emotions is to achieve catharsis of them - a cleansing, a purification, a purging, or release. Catharsis is at the core of tragedy's appeal. ↗

— Brandon W. Forbes

#philosophy #tragedy #art

Art is a deception that creates real emotions - a lie that creates a truth. And when you give yourself over to that deception, it becomes magic. ↗

— Marco Tempest

#deceptions #emotions #feelings #inspirational #lie

If you clean it up, get analytical, all the subtle joy and emotion you felt in the first place goes flying out the window. ↗

— Andrew Wyeth

#clean #emotion #felt #first #flying

Bragging about your compassion is the first step towards feeling a genuine emotion. ↗

— Bauvard

#compassion #emotion #funny #humor #funny

Feeling sorry for myself was an art. ↗

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

#emotion #art

Lacking a shared language, emotions are perhaps our most effective means of cross-species communication. We can share our emotions, we can understand the language of feelings, and that's why we form deep and enduring social bonds with many other beings. Emotions are the glue that binds. ↗

— Marc Bekoff

#emotions #inspirational #communication

Adolescence represents an inner emotional upheaval, a struggle between the eternal human wish to cling to the past and the equally powerful wish to get on with the future. ↗

— Louise J. Kaplan

#between #cling #emotional #equally #eternal

In the First World War, there was the sudden passion of nationalism, and the killing took place because of these emotions. But the Soviet case is different, because you had systematic murder, like the Holocaust. ↗

— Ryszard Kapuscinski

#case #different #emotions #first #first world

When I'm writing, I'm trying to immerse myself in the chaos of an emotional experience, rather than separate myself from it and look back at it from a distance with clarity and tell it as a story. Because that's how life is lived, you know? ↗

— Charlie Kaufman

#because #chaos #clarity #distance #emotional

Sometimes when we weep in the movies we weep for ourselves or for a life unlived. Or we even go to the movies because we want to resist the emotion that's there in front of us. I think there is always a catharsis that I look for and that makes the movie experience worthwhile. ↗

— Edward Zwick

#because #catharsis #emotion #even #experience