“He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.”

The reference is to Charles Townshend (1725–1767)
First Speech on the Conciliation with America (1774)

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Edmund Burke270

Anglo-Irish statesman 1729–1797

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“Passion is begotten of passion, and it easily happens, as with the children of great men, that the base is the offspring of the noble.”

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“Passion is something which very few of us have really felt. What we may have felt is enthusiasm, which is being caught up in an emotional state over something. Our passion is for something: for music, for painting, for literature, for a country, for a woman or a man; it is always the effect of a cause. When you fall in love with someone, you are in a great state of emotion, which is the effect of that particular cause; and what I am talking about is passion without a cause. It is to be passionate about everything, not just about something, whereas most of us are passionate about a particular person or thing. I think one must see this distinction very clearly. In the state of passion without a cause, there is intensity free of all attachment; but when passion has a cause, there is attachment, and attachment is the beginning of sorrow.”

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“The knowledge of God, the formation of ideas, the mastery of desire and passion, the distinction between that which is to be chosen and that which is to be rejected, all these man owes to his form…”

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“For of all the miseries attaching to miserable love, the worst is the misery of thinking that the passion which is the cause of them all may cease.”

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“Greatness is often born of the passionate dance between a rare talent and a noble purpose.”

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“But a morbid consciousness that others did not give him the place which he had not demonstrably merited—a perpetual suspicious conjecture that the views entertained of him were not to his advantage— a melancholy absence of passion in his efforts at achievement, and a passionate resistance to the confession that he had achieved nothing.”

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“While the passion of some is to shine, of some to govern, and of others to accumulate, let one great passion alone influence our breasts, the passion which reason ratifies, which conscience approves, which Heaven inspires, — that of being and doing good.”

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“Passions are generally roused from great conflict.”

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“To have defined and sure opinions, fixed and known instincts, passions and character — all that is the horror of turning our soul into a fact, materialize it and make it external.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 413<ǃ--Assírio & Alvim, 2008-->
As quoted in Os Grandes Trechos, Richard Zenith Edition, Lisbon, 2006, p. 413
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Ter opiniões definidas e certas, instintos, paixões e carácter fixo e conhecido — tudo isto monta ao horror de tornar a nossa alma num facto, de a materializar e tornar exterior.

“Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

“He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.”

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Edmund Burke270

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