quotations about passion
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed.
T. S. ELIOT
The Waste Land
Who does not believe his first passion eternal?
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
The Virginians
I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life.... If you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it at full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be.
ROALD DAHL
My Uncle Oswald
For the passions of men, which asunder are moderate, as the heat of one brand, in assembly are like many brands that enflame one another, (especially when they blow one another with orations) to the setting of the commonwealth on fire, under pretense of counseling it.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
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
Passion should not, in theory, offer any advantage, but should merely level out the playing field and make sport the spectacle that it so often is; passion is simply an inherently natural part of sport, it is not as the media hype train would like to argue, a phenomenon that raises its head only at those particularly heated derbies and grudge matches.
ADAM HILSENRATH
"The fundamentals of sporting passion", Cherwell Online, December 4, 2016
What makes you mad? What makes you sad? What makes you glad? There lies your passion.
ANONYMOUS
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
My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.
ALLEN GINSBERG
journal, July 30, 1947
The intensity of passion often defies logic. Gripped by its urgency, you feel the heat in your bones. It's an intoxicating drive that can only be appeased with action.
SAMUEL MPAMUGO
"Raw passion can harm go-getters", The Kenya Star, November 19, 2016
Being passionate is often stated as an important attribute for employees; passion is associated with determination, motivation and having a high degree of self-control. Being emotional, however, has almost a negative mirror effect and is associated with irrationality, instability, ineptitude and a low degree of self-control.
SUNITA SAH
"Having a Meltdown at Work? Blame It on Your Passion", Science Daily, December 12, 2016
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
Passion costs me too much to bestow it upon every trifle.
THOMAS ADAM
Private Thoughts on Religion
If love is a child, passion is a man.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Passion is a sort of fever in the mind, which ever leaves us weaker than it found us.... It more than anything deprives us of the use of our judgment; for it raises a dust very hard to see through. Like wine, whose lees fly by being jogg'd, it is too muddy to drink.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
The man who will not give up his passions, who clings to anger, unkindness, sensuality, pride, vanity self-indulgence, for the momentary pleasure which their gratification affords him is a spiritual miser; he cannot have any spiritual comforts.
JAMES ALLEN
Byways of Blessedness
Passion is the genesis of genius.
LILLET WALTERS
Secrets of Successful Speakers
What is passion? It is surely the becoming of a person. Are we not, for most of our lives, marking time? Most of our being is at rest, unlived. In passion, the body and the spirit seek expression outside of self. Passion is all that is other from self. Sex is only interesting when it releases passion. The more extreme and the more expressed that passion is, the more unbearable does life seem without it. It reminds us that if passion dies or is denied, we are partly dead and that soon, come what may, we will be wholly so.
JOHN BOORMAN
Projections
Men utter a vast amount of slander against their physical nature, and attempt to repair deficient virtue by maiming their animal passions. These are to be trained, guided, restrained, but never crucified or exterminated, for they are the soil in which we were planted.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Passion may not unfitly be termed the mob of the man, that commits a riot upon his reason.
WILLIAM PENN
Fruits of Solitude