“The subject of love is always of the most absorbing interest to the younger and more active portion of a people; sexual passion, in its ennobling or debasing form, exercises irresistible attraction.”

Notes to The Atrocity Exhibition (1970; written 1967 - 1969, annotated 1990)
Context: All over the world major museums have bowed to the influence of Disney and become theme parks in their own right. The past, whether Renaissance Italy or ancient Egypt, is reassimilated and homogenized into its most digestible form. Desperate for the new, but disappointed with anything but the familiar, we recolonise past and future. The same trend can be seen in personal relationships, in the way people are expected to package themselves, their emotions and sexuality in attractive and instantly appealing forms.

Source: Eating People is Wrong (1959), Ch. 5

Source: Gertrude (1910), p. 217

Letter to the Bailli de Ploën, as quoted in Recollections of the Private Life of General Lafayette (1835) by Jules Germain Cloquet, Vol. I, p. 24
Context: An irresistible passion that would induce me to believe in innate ideas, and the truth of prophecy, has decided my career. I have always loved liberty with the enthusiasm which actuates the religious man with the passion of a lover, and with the conviction of a geometrician. On leaving college, where nothing had displeased me more than a state of dependance, I viewed the greatness and the littleness of the court with contempt, the frivolities of society with pity, the minute pedantry of the army with disgust, and oppression of every sort with indignation. The attraction of the American revolution transported me suddenly to my place. I felt myself tranquil only when sailing between the continent whose powers I had braved, and that where, although our arrival and our ultimate success were problematical, I could, at the age of nineteen, take refuge in the alternative of conquering or perishing in the cause to which I had devoted myself.

Regarding the Torture of Others (2004)

"Ah, that might explain why I so often run into people who seem to dislike me."
Clary and Jace, pg. 331
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

Cassandra (1860)
Context: Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity — these three — and a place in society where no one of the three can be exercised? Men say that God punishes for complaining. No, but men are angry with misery. They are irritated with women for not being happy. They take it as a personal offence. To God alone may women complain without insulting Him!

What I learned, loved and lost as a trans Zumba addict (2018)