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- For one heat, all know, doth drive out another,
- One passion doth expel another still.
GEORGE CHAPMAN, Monsieur D'Olive
In the composition of the human frame there is a good deal of inflammable matter, however dormant it may lie for a time.
GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to Eleanor Parke Custis, Jan. 16, 1795
Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI, Coningsby
Human passion is a heavy working charge of electricity, which runs safely and profitably through the cable reason; but, if the cable is broken, the current becomes dangerous.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY, Keystones of Thought
What passion cannot Music raise and quell?
JOHN DRYDEN, St. Cecilia's Day
No matter how successful a relationship may be, both sexually and emotionally, the lack of money can hamper and undermine, little by little, even the greatest passion.
LAURA ESQUIVEL, Swift as Desire
We are ne’er like angels till our passion dies.
THOMAS DEKKER, The Honest Whore
Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.
DENIS DIDEROT, Discours sur la poésie dramatique
There are moments when our passions speak and decide for us ... like a fire kindled within our being to which everything else in us is mere fuel.
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
EDMUND BURKE, On the Sublime and Beautiful
- Passion alone the abysses
- Lights, while we grope up the rifted
- Slopes; our spirits it kisses,
- Ere into the deeps we are drifted.
There is no human being who having both passions and thoughts does not think in consequences of his passions--does not find images rising in his mind which soothe the passion with hope or sting it with dread.
GEORGE ELIOT, Middlemarch
Everyone's got to be passionate about something, or they're not worth shit.
Passion and prejudice govern the world; only under the name of reason.
JOHN WESLEY, letter to Joseph Benson, Oct. 5, 1770
- We are all alike, and we love to keep passion aglow at our feet,
- Like one that sitteth in shade and complacently smiles at the heat.
ALFRED AUSTIN, "A Woman's Apology"
Each person discovers a field of allurements, the totality of which bears the unique stamp of that person's personality. Destiny unfolds in the pursuit of individual fascinations and interests ... By pursuing your allurements, you help bind the universe together. The unity of the world rests on the pursuit of passion.
BRIAN SWIMME, The Universe is a Green Dragon
- I flush with heaving passion's strange delight,
- Yet find contentment lost in appetite.
EDWIN LEIBFREED, "The Quest for God"
The best fire doesna flare up the soonest.
Men who act under dishonest passions are like men riding fierce horses: they cannot stop when they will, and they ride to ruin.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
As a storm conceals the glories of the sun and defaces the beauty of the landscape, even so do maddening passions deform the soul, bearing along with their impetuous waves both pestilence and death.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY, Proverbs
The fugitive, brief, though intense satisfactions that come to the nerves through the appetite and passions are not the foundations of joy in this world: they come with a moment's flash, and are disastrous in their flight.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The great attraction and the great danger of passion is that it is something outside of oneself, a strong wind from nowhere in the face of which the forest of everyday thought and behavior cannot stand.
- Passions are likened best to floods and streams:
- The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.
WALTER RALEIGH, The Silent Lover
All passion becomes strength when it has an outlet.
A single spark of occasion discharges the child of passions into a thousand crackers of desire.
JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER, Aphorisms on Man
The way to avoid evil is not by maiming our passions, but by compelling them to yield their vigor to our moral nature. They should be to spiritual sentiments what the hot-bed is to early flowers.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
By privileges, immunities, or prerogatives to give unlimited swing to the passions of individuals, and then to hope that they will restrain them, is about as reasonable as to expect that the tiger will spare the hart to browse upon the herbage.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Many people in reasoning on the passions make a continual appeal to common sense. But passion is without common sense, and we must frequently discard the one in speaking of the other.
WILLIAM HAZLITT, Characteristics
A great tragedy passes from crest to hollow of passion, rises and sinks again, as rhythmically as sea-waves.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY, Keystones of Thought
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