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This article introduces some reflections bringing together three topics – emotions, sentiments and family capitalism. Family business scholars have approached the issue of emotions and sentiments with caution, largely because of the difficulty of analyzing them without a solid and sufficiently theoretical framework. To date socioemotional wealth theory (SEW) has represented the major contribution. This article proposes a new theoretical framework in order to assess the role of emotions and sentiments in the sphere of family firms.Sentiments and emotions range from nostalgia and memory, trauma, grief, mourning, empathy, compassion, fear, anger, anxiety, hate, love, desire, jealousy, envy, greed, and also include admiration, revenge and competitiveness. Such feelings exist among members of the same generation or, even more often, across generations and they have significant influence on individuals who have to make decisions. Such sentiments and emotions thus contribute to the way in which decisions are taken, affecting the overall wealth of the enterprise itself.The article contributes to arguments supporting the use of history as a way to improve theory-building in general. More specifically, a history approach adds particular value in such a difficult and unpredictable area of analysis as that of the impact of emotions on the management of the family firm.