As adults, we can develop and change our opinions. In childhood, we establish the truth of our hearts.

— Sherry Turkle

As women, we are always taught never to let a man know of our affections towards him, lest he laugh, run away, or think that we are psycho. But what if that's not true? Have you ever stopped to think that? What if it's like there's a beautiful little bird in our hearts, and we're too afraid to let anyone see it in there? What's wrong with letting anyone know that there's a bird in your chest? Maybe there are lots of wrong ones, but maybe there's one that's just for you— the one who won't laugh or run away when he sees that little bird. After all, it’s just a pretty bird!

— C. JoyBell C.

Consideration doth, as it were, open the door between the head and the heart: the understanding having received truths, lays them up in the memory now, consideration is the conveyed of theme from thence to the affections (571).

— Richard Baxter

He that has doctrinal knowledge and speculation only, without affection, never is engaged in the business of religion.

— Jonathan Edwards

If the heart be chiefly and directly fixed on God, and the soul engaged to glorify him, some degree of religious affection will be the effect and attendant of it. But to seek after affection directly and chiefly; to have the heart principally set upon that; is to place it in the room of God and his glory. If it is sought, that others may take notice of it, and admire us for our spirituality and forwardness in religion, it is then damnable pride; if for the sake of feeling the pleasure of being affected, it is then idolatry and self-gratification.

— Jonathan Edwards

If truth does not lead to falling in love, it fails.

— John Piper

It does not answer the aim which God had in this institution, merely for men to have good commentaries and expositions on the Scripture, and other good books of divinity; because, although these may tend, as well as preaching, to give a good doctrinal or speculative understanding of the word of God, yet they have not an equal tendency to impress them on men's hearts and affections. God hath appointed a particular and lively application of his word, in the preaching of it, as a fit means to affect sinners with the importance of religion, their own misery, the necessity of a remedy, and the glory and sufficiency of a remedy provided; to stir up the pure minds of the saints, quicken their affections by often bringing the great things of religion in their remembrance, and setting them in their proper colors, though they know them, and have been fully instructed in them already.

— Jonathan Edwards

Kind words and tender affections will not save me from this lake of woe and misery, but they may be enough of a buoy to prevent my drowning.

— Richelle E. Goodrich

Minimizing the importance of transformed feelings makes Christian conversion less supernatural and less radical. It is humanly manageable to make decisions of the will for Christ. No supernatural power is required to pray prayers, sign cards, walk aisles, or even stop sleeping around. Those are good. They just don’t prove that anything spiritual has happened. Christian conversion, on the other hand, is a supernatural, radical thing. The heart is changed. And the evidence of it is not just new decisions, but new affections, new feelings.

— John Piper

No one has ever been deeply changed by an act of the will. The only thing that can re-forge and change a life at its root, is love.

— Timothy J. Keller