“All passion is lost now. The world is mediocre, limp, without force.”
Source: The Secret Agent (1907), Ch. 13
Context: All passion is lost now. The world is mediocre, limp, without force. And madness and despair are a force. And force is a crime in the eyes of the fools, the weak and the silly who rule the roost. You are mediocre. Verloc, whose affair the police has managed to smother so nicely, was mediocre. And the police murdered him. He was mediocre. Everybody is mediocre. Madness and despair! Give me that for a lever, and I'll move the world. Ossipon, you have my cordial scorn. You are incapable of conceiving even what the fat-fed citizen would call a crime. You have no force.
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Joseph Conrad 127
Polish-British writer 1857–1924Related quotes
“Nothing great in the world was accomplished without passion.”
Often abbreviated to: Nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion.
Variant translation: We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without enthusiasm.
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Volume 1
Variant: We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.
Context: We assert then that nothing has been accomplished without interest on the part of the actors; and — if interest be called passion, inasmuch as the whole individuality, to the neglect of all other actual or possible interests and claims, is devoted to an object with every fibre of volition, concentrating all its desires and powers upon it — we may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion.
As quoted in Social Networking for Authors: Untapped Possibilities for Wealth (2009) by Michael Volkin, p. 60
2000s, 2009
“What you call passion is not spiritual force, but friction between the soul and the outside world.”
The Glass Bead Game (1943)
Context: To be capable of everything and do justice to everything, one certainly does not need less spiritual force and èlan and warmth, but more. What you call passion is not spiritual force, but friction between the soul and the outside world. Where passion dominates, that does not signify the presence of greater desire and ambition, but rather the misdirection of these qualities toward an isolated and false goal, with a consequent tension and sultriness in the atmosphere. Those who direct the maximum force of their desires toward the center, toward true being, toward perfection, seem quieter than the passionate souls because the flame of their fervor cannot always be seen.
“It's better to get lost in the passion than to lose the passion”
Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 18, The Strange Man's Tale Goes On
”Alexander the Great,” p. 55
Circling: 1978-1987 (1993), Sequence: “A Warden with No Keys”
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Journal
Variant: Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.
Trump 101 The Way to Success (2007), p. 2
2000s