Literary notes about feel (AI summary)
Writers employ the term "feel" as a multifaceted device that bridges the tangible and the intangible. It can denote physical sensations, such as the touch of a glove or the rush of a heartbeat [1, 2], yet it equally serves to articulate deep-seated emotions—from isolation and melancholy to love and indignation [3, 4]. Authors use "feel" to invite readers into the characters’ inner lives, allowing them to experience delicate moments of tenderness, confusion, or even torment [5, 6]. Whether describing a sudden sensory perception or a complex emotional reaction, the word enriches the narrative by rendering experiences both viscerally immediate and thoughtfully reflective [7, 8].
- I touch Miss Shepherd’s glove, and feel a thrill go up the right arm of my jacket, and come out at my hair.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens - It was great fun to plunge my hand into the bowl and feel the tadpoles frisk about, and to let them slip and slide between my fingers.
— from The Story of My Life by Helen Keller - Or does he feel that he is sketching an inescapable human condition which makes all of us bear the burden of loneliness?
— from Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life by Sherwood Anderson - When I compare myself to you, I feel a very great pity for myself, poor unhappy monster that I am!
— from Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo - The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment.
— from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce - ‘I can feel for anyone that is unjustly treated,’ I replied, ‘and I can feel for those that injure them too.’
— from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë - Here I feel a double contempt; from my relations, but they are absent; from those about me, but they are strangers.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume - I feel the ship's motion under me, I feel the Atlantic breezes fanning me, I hear the cry again sent down from the mast-head, There—she blows!
— from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
