Capacity to feel (Skutch)

If my experience is typical, as children of six or seven we feel joy and sorrow, we love and even hate, as intensely as we ever can. From this age onward, mental growth increases our ability to reason and plan but hardly our capacity to feel. Perhaps, indeed, our emotional responses are attenuated as we form the habit of reacting practically to the crises in our lives, of trying to understand their causes or foresee their consequences.

Alexander F. Skutch, The Imperative Call