quotations about passion
Passion is not well bred.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
Passion has overthrown tyrants and freed prisoners and slaves. Passion has brought justice where there was savagery. Passion has created freedom where there was nothing but fear. Passion has helped souls rise from the ashes of their horrible lives and build something better, stronger, more beautiful.
JIM BUTCHER
White Night
Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
Coningsby
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, January 16, 1795
If you have a great passion it seems that the logical thing is to see the fruit of it, and the fruit are children.
ROMAN POLANSKI
Independent on Sunday, May 12, 1991
We condemn generally the passions of others by other passions either like or unlike.
PASQUIER QUESNEL
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Passion. It lies in all of us. Sleeping ... waiting ... and though unwanted ... unbidden ... it will stir ... open its jaws, and howl. It speaks to us ... guides us. Passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments ... the joy of love ... the clarity of hatred ... and the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, maybe we'd know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank. Without passion, we'd truly be dead.
ANGELUS
"Passion", Buffy the Vampire Slayer
It is only with the passions of others that we are ever really familiar, and what we come to discover about our own can only be learned from them.
MARCEL PROUST
Swann's Way
However we may conceal our passions under the veil ... there is always some place where they peep out.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
Between two beings susceptible of love, the duration of passion is in proportion to the original resistance of the woman, or to the obstacles which the accidents of social life put in the way of your happiness.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Whatever care we take to conceal our passions under the appearance of piety and honor, they are always to be seen through these veils.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
Those who have had great passions often find all their lives made miserable in being cured of them.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
The worst of slaves are those that are constantly serving their passions.
DIOGENES
attributed, Day's Collacon
The passions refuse to be organized on a basis of their own; hostile to personal freedom and one another, they rush precipitately into anarchy and mob rule.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
While the happiest retirees have a passion, they leave enough room in their lives for the other spokes of the wheel.
LARRY JACOBSON
"The happiest retirees have learned this lesson", Market Watch, November 23, 2016
When the mind is clouded with passions, it is odds but a man misses his way.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Passion is an all-important part of a romantic relationship. A marriage without passion can be a very dull, uninteresting union. It, however, is just one part of a happy marriage. All the other virtues should be looked for in a long-term partnership -- unselfishness, generosity, loyalty, honesty, self-control and don't forget industry.
NINA GILFERT
"The topic today is love", Daily Commercial, November 20, 2016
It is a remarkable property of human nature, that any emotion, which attends a passion, is easily converted into it, though in their natures they be originally different from, and even contrary to each other. It is true; in order to make a perfect union among passions, there is always required a double relation of impressions and ideas; nor is one relation sufficient for that purpose. But though this be confirmed by undoubted experience, we must understand it with its proper limitations, and must regard the double relation, as requisite only to make one passion produce another. When two passions are already produced by their separate causes, and are both present in the mind, they readily mingle and unite, though they have but one relation, and sometimes without any. The predominant passion swallows up the inferior, and converts it into itself. The spirits, when once excited, easily receive a change in their direction; and it is natural to imagine this change will come from the prevailing affection. The connexion is in many respects closer betwixt any two passions, than betwixt any passion and indifference.
DAVID HUME
"Of the Causes of the Violent Passions", A Treatise of Human Nature
In the human heart there is a perpetual generation of passions; so that the ruin of one is almost always the foundation of another.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims