Touch Quotations

19 of the 43+ quotations on this topic from From Rob Kall's personal quotation database. Doing a book or chapter and need special topics? Call for very reasonable prices on a special quotation search. If you use a quote from here in your book or website, please acknowledge the source with my name and this URL in the appropriate section of your  book.

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Did you hug your child today?

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Touch seems to be as essential as sunlight

Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of The Senses

 

In the absence of touching and being touched, people of all ages can sicken and grow touch starved.

Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of The Senses

 

The skin, which from head to foot relates us sensitively to the world in which we live, our matrix, is indeed our most consistently active and informing organ of sense. In a dark vacuum where only minimal sight, hearing, taste, smell and muscle activity would be possible, the skin could still report something of the nature of the surroundings: dry, cold, wet, hot, soft, hard, pressure. This was at one time our total awareness of the nature of the sheltering womb.

Joan M. Erikson, Wisdom And The Senses; The Way of Creativity, 1988

 

FEELING, HEARTWARMING, SYMPATHY

There is a chord in every heart that has a sigh in it if touched aright.

Ouida

 

The truth is that the beginning of anything and its end are alike touching.

Yoshida Kenko, Life Frail and Fleeting, The Harvest of Leisure, 1330-1335

 

FEELING, SYMPATHY, TOUCHED

His heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind.

OT: Isaiah, vii, 2

 

"One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it parted by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimuli and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application. No account of the universe in its totality can be final, which leaves other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question - for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas and open a region though they fail to give a map. At any rate they forbid a premature closing of our accounts of reality."

Wm James Varieties of Religious Experience

 

HEART, QUALITY, EXCELLENCE

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched... but are felt in the heart.

Helen Keller

 

I touch the future. I teach.

Christa McAuliffe

 

Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.

--Edwin Hubbel Chapin

 

HEARTWARMING, TOUCHING, SMILE

"Of all the tales, 'tis the saddest-- and more sad,

Because it makes us smile."

Byron, Don Juan, Canto 8

 

In the man whose childhood has known caresses and kindness, there is always a fibre of memory that can be touched to gentle issues.

George Elliot

 

OPPOSITES

"The Magnificent and Ridiculous are such near Neighbors that they touch one another."

Fontenelle, Dialogues du Morts. Anciens et Moderns,I.

 

Sometimes hearing about other people's sadness can touch an empathic chord in our hearts which moves us deeply. When out of that pain somehing clearly good, perhaps even beautiful happens, that chord can become a symphony. A beautiful article which shows there are special kinds of light which burst onto the planet occasionally.

Rob Kall

 

HEARTWARMING

Hands of invisible spirits touch the strings

Of that mysterious instrument, the soul

Longfellow, The Spanish Student

 

FEELING, EMOTION, EMPATHY

"The soul of music lumbers in the shell,

Till wak'd and kindled by the master's spell,

And feeling hearts-- touch them but lightly--pour

A thousand melodies unheard before."

ROGERS, SAMUEL, 1763-1855: Human Life

 

CONNECT, FEEL, OPPORTUNITY

"To touch the quick."

Sophocles

 

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, 1602

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2/14/99