Notable Quotes
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QUOTES ON PASSION

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

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.

GEORGE ELIOT, Romola

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.

HENRI CAZALIS, "Always"

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.

JOSEPH FINDER, Paranoia

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.

GEORGE ELIOT, Adam Bede

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 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.

DAN SIMMONS, Lovedeath

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.

GEORGE ELIOT, Adam Bede