“Passion is like suffering, and like suffering it creates its object.”

— Miguel de Unamuno

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), XI : The Practical Problem
Context: Passion is like suffering, and like suffering it creates its object. It is easier for the fire to find something to burn than for something combustible to find the fire.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Passion is like suffering, and like suffering it creates its object." by Miguel de Unamuno?

Miguel de Unamuno 199

19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher 1864–1936

Diane Wood Middlebrook (1939–2007) biographer

Source: Anne Sexton: A Biography

“The universe appears to me like an immense, inexorable torture-garden…Passions, greed, hatred, and lies; social institutions, justice, love, glory, heroism, and religion: these are its monstrous flowers and its hideous instruments of eternal human suffering.”

Octave Mirbeau (1848–1917) French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright

Garden of Tortures

“We who are like senseless children shrink from suffering, but love its causes. We hurt ourselves; our pain is self-inflicted! Why should others be the object of our anger?”

Šantidéva (685–763) 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar

“You will suffer just so much as must be added of your sufferings to the complete passion of Christ, who suffered as our Head and who continues to suffer in His members”

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

Source: On the Mystical Body of Christ, pp. 424-425
Context: What does the Scripture mean when it tells us of the body of one man so extended in space that all can kill him? We must understand these words of ourselves, of our Church, or the body of Christ. For Jesus Christ is one man, having a Head and a body. The Saviour of the body and the members of the body are two in one flesh, and in one voice, and in one passion, and, when iniquity shall have passed away, in one repose.
And so the passion of Christ is not in Christ alone; and yet the passion of Christ is in Christ alone. For if in Christ you consider both the Head and the body, the Christ’s passion is in Christ alone; but if by Christ you mean only the Head, then Christ’s passion is not in Christ alone. Hence if you are in the members of Christ, all you who hear me, and even you who hear me not (though you do hear, if you are united with the members of Christ), whatever you suffer at the hands of those who are no among the members of Christ, was lacking to the sufferings of Christ. It is added precisely because it was lacking. You fill up the measure; you do not cause it to overflow. You will suffer just so much as must be added of your sufferings to the complete passion of Christ, who suffered as our Head and who continues to suffer in His members, that is, in us. Into this common treasury each pays what he owes, and according to each one’s ability we all contribute our share of suffering. The full measure of the Passion will not be attained until the end of the world.

“Love is something like the notion that, despite its suffering, Being is good and you should serve Being.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

“Suspicion always being likely to see what it suspects the chances were many that I was creating the very thing I suffered from.”

Basil King (1859–1928) Canadian writer

Source: The Conquest of Fear (1921), Chapter III : God And His Self-Expression, § VIII
Context: I was to see myself as God's Self-Expression working with others who were also His Self-Expression to the same extent as I. It was in the fact of our uniting together to produce His Self-Expression that I was to look for my security. No one could effectively work against me while I was consciously trying to work with God. Moreover, it was probable that no one was working against me, or had any intention of working against me, but that my own point of view being wrong I had put the harmonious action of my life out of order. Suspicion always being likely to see what it suspects the chances were many that I was creating the very thing I suffered from.
This does not mean that in our effort to reproduce harmonious action we should shut our eyes to what is evidently wrong, or blandly ignore what is plainly being done to our disadvantage. Of course not! One uses all the common-sense methods of getting justice for oneself and protecting one's own interests. But it does mean that when I can no longer protect my own interests, when my affairs depend upon others far more than on myself — a condition in which we all occasionally find ourselves — I am not to fret myself, not to churn my spirit into nameless fears. I am not a free agent. Those with whom I am associated are not free agents. God is the one supreme command. He expresses Himself through me; He expresses Himself through them; we all.