Quotes about passion

A collection of quotes on the topic of passion, love, life, doing.

Best quotes about passion

“I would rather die of passion than of boredom.”

Emile Zola book Au Bonheur des Dames

Source: The Ladies' Paradise

“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Ich habe keine besondere Begabung, sondern bin nur leidenschaftlich neugierig. Letter to Carl Seelig http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Seelig (11 March 1952), Einstein Archives 39-013 1950s

“Patience and time do more than strength or passion.”

Jean De La Fontaine (1621–1695) French poet, fabulist and writer.

Patience et longueur de temps
Font plus que force ni que rage.
Book II (1668), fable 11.
Fables (1668–1679)

“I would rather die of passion than of boredom”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Not by van Gogh, but from Emile Zola's novel The Ladies' Paradise (1883)
Misattributed

“To play without passion is inexcusable!”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

Not found in Beethoven's known works. It may be a summary of the following description of Beethoven from his piano pupil Ferdinand Ries: "When I left out something in a passage, a note or a skip, which in many cases he wished to have specially emphasized, or struck a wrong key, he seldom said anything; yet when I was at fault with regard to the expression, the crescendo or matters of that kind, or in the character of the piece, he would grow angry. Mistakes of the other kind, he said were due to chance; but these last resulted from want of knowledge, feeling or attention. He himself often made mistakes of the first kind, even playing in public."
Disputed
Variant: To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable

“Maybe my passion is nothing special, but at least it's mine.”

Tove Jansson (1914–2001) Finnish children's writer and illustrator

Source: Travelling Light

“Passion is the fuel.”

Yanni (1954) Greek pianist, keyboardist, composer, and music producer

Yanni in Words. Miramax Books. Co-author David Rensin

“Passion is the genesis of genius.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

“I am happy in my prison of passion”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Nothing great in the world was accomplished without passion.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Lectures on the Philosophy of History

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.

Emile Zola quote: “I would rather die of passion than of boredom.”

Quotes about passion

“Honestly, sometimes I’m feeling like they treat me as a celebrity or an idol, but I’m not quite that. But I understand they’re all here to support me and I appreciate that passion.”

Yuzuru Hanyu (1994) Japanese figure skater (1994-)

Interpretation of a Japanese interview, as quoted in the same The New York Times-article linked above, published 4 January 2018.
Other quotes, 2018

Understanding, Support, Feeling

“To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

Not found in Beethoven's known works. It may be a summary of the following description of Beethoven from his piano pupil Ferdinand Ries: "When I left out something in a passage, a note or a skip, which in many cases he wished to have specially emphasized, or struck a wrong key, he seldom said anything; yet when I was at fault with regard to the expression, the crescendo or matters of that kind, or in the character of the piece, he would grow angry. Mistakes of the other kind, he said were due to chance; but these last resulted from want of knowledge, feeling or attention. He himself often made mistakes of the first kind, even playing in public." Disputed Source: "When Beethoven gave me a lesson" https://books.google.com/books?id=j8RIq67v51cC&pg=PA294&dq=%22when+beethoven+gave+me+a+lesson%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAGoVChMI7Yyz0PiNyQIViDuICh1YIAzR#v=onepage&q=%22when%20beethoven%20gave%20me%20a%20lesson%22&f=false

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Shared on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/MayaAngelou/posts/10150251846629796, July 4, 2011

For women, Inspirational, Motivational, Wise

“There is a difference between a passion and a fucking meltdown.”

Nicki Minaj (1982) Trinidadian-born American singer, rapper and actress

Source: Queen Radio Episode 8, September 10th, 2018

“It is without doubt, nowadays, that many students lack the ability to know or find their true passions in life; after all the criticism they went through. Whether it is at school, college, university or any learning environment.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Learning, Universe, School, Life

“I want so obviously, so desperately to be loved, and to be capable of love. I am still so naive; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please don’t ask me who I am. A passionate fragmentary girl, maybe?”

Sylvia Plath book The unabridged journals of Sylvia Plath

Girl, Love

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”

Harriet Tubman (1820–1913) African-American abolitionist and humanitarian

Inspirational, Success, Motivational, Hope

“I mean I like to be passionate and sincere but I also like to have fun and act like a dork. Geeks unite.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Sincerity

“Punk rock should mean freedom, liking and excepting anything that you like. Playing whatever you want. As sloppy as you want. As long as it's good and it has passion.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Freedom

“Death makes no sense except to people who have passionately loved life. How can one die without having something to part from? Detachment is a negation of both life and death. Whoever has overcome his fear of death has also triumphed over life. For life is nothing but another word for this fear.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Tears and Saints (1937)

Love, Life, Death, People

“What is man’s life but love, love of self;
Man is dust, dust as his passion, dust as the beloved.Death, it is your great act of piety for man –
You take him to your house or he’d be left to himself.Death is a covenant between the lover and the beloved;
Death is a secret wedlock between being and non-being.Death harbors the hidden port of life’s ocean;
Death is helpless and a vision of beauty to itself.Death is the only witness of my life and your grace,
And O strange lord, of night and the crescent.”

Ghani Khan (1914–1996) Pakistani poet

Death, st. 8-12

Love, Life, Death, Secret

“There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life.”

Federico Fellini (1920–1993) Italian filmmaker

Fellini on Fellini (1976) edited by Anna Keel and Christian Strich; translated by Isabel Quigly.
Variant: There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the passion of life.

Life

“The Church right now has more fashion than passion, is more pathetic than prophetic, is more superficial than supernatural.”

Leonard Ravenhill (1907–1994) British writer

Source: Revival God's Way

Fashion

“Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Lord Darlington, Act II
Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

Relationship, Love, Women, Men

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”

Oscar Wilde book De Profundis

De Profundis (1897)

People

“Of all the creatures that were made he [man] is the most detestable. Of the entire brood he is the only one — the solitary one — that possesses malice. That is the basest of all instincts, passions, vices — the most hateful…He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain…Also — in all the list he is the only creature that has a nasty mind.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Vol. II, p. 7
Mark Twain's Autobiography (1924)

Pain, Hate, Sport

“My lover's gone off to some foreign country, sopping wet at our doorway
I watch the clouds rupture.
Mira says, nothing can harm him.
This passion has yet to be slaked.”

Meera Bai Hindu mystic poet

Mīrābāī, in For love of the Dark One: songs of Mirabai http://books.google.co.in/books?id=oLFjAAAAMAAJ, p. 55

Lovers, Country

“Without passion, you don't have energy; without energy, you have nothing. Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

As quoted in Social Networking for Authors: Untapped Possibilities for Wealth (2009) by Michael Volkin, p. 60
2000s, 2009

World

“Off-Off-Broadway is absolutely necessary. It doesn't have to be sanctioned by the state, subsidized or anything. The plank and the passion is what it's about.”

Al Pacino (1940) American film and stage actor and director

Producing Off-Off-Broadway] (2007)

“I judged the Poles by their enemies. And I found it was an almost unfailing- truth that their enemies were the enemies of magna- nimity and manhood. If a man loved slavery, if he loved usury, if he loved terrorism and all the trampled mire of materialistic politics, I have always found that he added to these affections the passion of a hatred of Poland. She could be judged in the light of that hatred; and the judgment has proved to be right.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Letters on Polish Affairs (1922)
Source: https://archive.org/stream/lettersonpolisha00sarouoft/lettersonpolisha00sarouoft_djvu.txt

Love, Truth, Light

“It is a grand thing to see a man thoroughly possessed with one master-passion. Such a man is sure to be strong, and if the master-principle be excellent, he is sure to be excellent, too.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

The Soul-Winner (1895)

Strong

“The philosophy of friendship has definitely paid off, because after all the highs and lows we’re still sticking together and we haven’t lost the passion for what we’re doing. In the Seventies, there were few changes, then we had this line-up with Herman [Rarebell] and Francis [Buchholz] for almost twenty years.”

Klaus Meine (1948) German singer

Friendship, Change

“In Aberdeen, I hated my best friends with a passion, because they were idiots.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

As quoted in The Daily Of The University Of Washington (1989-05-05).
Interviews (1989-1994), Print

Hate

“The chain of young life is broken,
The journey is ended, the hour has struck, it is time to leave,
Time to go where there is no future,
No past, no eternity, no years;
Where there are no expectations, no passions,
No bitter tears, no fame, no honour;
Where memory sleeps deeply
And the heart in its narrow coffin home
Does not feel the worm gnawing it.”

Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841) Russian writer, poet and painter

"Death" (1830 or 1831)
Poems

Life, Feeling, Home, Tear

“We grow older more quickly by not chasing our passionate desires; passion helps one to feel alive.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

2019

Help, Feeling

“God’s purpose for my life was that I have a passion for God’s glory and that I have a passion for my joy in that glory, and that these two are one passion.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Life, God, Joy

“I married him against all evidence. I married him believing that marriage doesn't work, that love dies, that passion fades, and in so doing I became the kind of romantic only a cynic is truly capable of being.”

Nora Ephron book Heartburn

Source: Heartburn

Love, Marriage

“We must get beyond passions, like a great work of art. In such miraculous harmony. We should learn to love each other so much to live outside of time… detached.”

Federico Fellini (1920–1993) Italian filmmaker

Source: La Dolce Vita: Federico Fellini's Masterpiece

Love, Art, Learning, Time

“Why, what is to live? Not to eat and drink and breathe,—but to feel the life in you down all the fibres of being, passionately and joyfully.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Source: The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barret Barrett 1845-1846 Vol I

Life, Feeling, Drink

“Reason flows from the blending of rational thought and feeling. If the two functions are torn apart, thinking deteriorates into schizoid intellectual activity and feeling deteriorates into neurotic life-damaging passions.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Life, Feeling, Thinking

“Men are allowed to have passion and commitment for their work… a woman is allowed that feeling for a man, but not her work.”

Barbra Streisand (1942) American singer, actress, writer, film producer, and director

Men, Feeling

“Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

As quoted in The Runner's Book of Daily Inspiration : A Year of Motivation, Revelation, and Instruction (1999) by Kevin Nelson, p. 11.

“What do you think an artist is?… he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

War, World, Thinking, Heart

“What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who only has eyes, if he is a painter, or ears if he is a musician, or a lyre in every chamber of his heart if he is a poet, or even, if he is a boxer, just his muscles? Far from it: at the same time he is also a political being, constantly aware of the heartbreaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. How could it be possible to feel no interest in other people, and with a cool indifference to detach yourself from the very life which they bring to you so abundantly? No, painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Life, War, People, World

“My emotional life: dialectic between craving for privacy and need to submerge myself in a passionate relationship to another.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

Life

“Give me that man that is not passion's slave, and I will wear him in my heart's core, in my heart of heart, as I do thee.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

Heart

“Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

“Those who control their passions do so because their passions are weak enough to be controlled.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

“Never depend upon institutions or government to solve any problem. All social movements are founded by, guided by, motivated and seen through by the passion of individuals.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Attributed in Talent Development for English Language Learners: Identifying and Developing Potential (2013) by Michael S. Matthews, Ph.D. SBN-13:9781618211057
2000s
Variant: Never ever depend on governments or institutions to solve any major problems. All social change comes from the passion of individuals.

Motivation, Problem, Dependency

“Your true passion should feel like breathing; it’s that natural.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Feeling, Nature

“To sing a wrong note is insignificant, but to sing without passion is unforgivable.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

Singing

“Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

Dance

“We deny the existence of two classes, because there are many more than two classes. We deny that human history can be explained in terms of economics. We deny your internationalism. That is a luxury article which only the elevated can practise, because peoples are passionately bound to their native soil.
We affirm that the true story of capitalism is now beginning, because capitalism is not a system of oppression only, but is also a selection of values, a coordination of hierarchies, a more amply developed sense of individual responsibility.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Speech (21 June 1921), Ion Smeaton Munro, Through Fascism to World Power: A History of the Revolution in Italy, 27 January 2008 http://books.google.com/books?id=DML39RmvsmYC&pg=PA120&dq=%E2%80%9CWe+deny+your+internationalism%22+mussolini&lr=&sig=gTHVLgfaIKPCn_jW8f0phjDKrAI, 1920s

People, History, Sense

“Music is not a hobby, not even a passion with me; music is me. I feel what people get out of me is this outlook on life, which comes out in my music. My music is the last expression of all that.”

Arthur Rubinstein (1887–1982) Polish-American classical pianist

John Guinn (December 22, 1982) "Rubinstein Was His Music", Detroit Free Press, p. 8D.
Attributed

Life, People, Music, Feeling

“What is our life? A play of passion;
our mirth: the music of division;
our mother's wombs: the tiring houses be
where we are dressed for this short comedy.
Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is
that sits and marks still who doth act amiss.
Our graves that hide us from the searching sun
are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus march we playing to our latest rest,
only we die in earnest, that's no jest.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

"On the Life of Man" (1612)
Attributed

Life, Music, Search, Sun

“There is no doubt a difference in the right hon. gentleman's demeanour as leader of the Opposition and as Minister of the Crown. But that's the old story; you must not contrast too strongly the hours of courtship with the years of possession. 'Tis very true that the right hon. gentleman's conduct is different. I remember him making his protection speeches. They were the best speeches I ever heard. It was a great thing to hear the right hon. gentleman say: "I would rather be the leader of the gentlemen of England than possess the confidence of Sovereigns". That was a grand thing. We don't hear much of "the gentlemen of England" now. But what of that? They have the pleasures of memory—the charms of reminiscence. They were his first love, and, though he may not kneel to them now as in the hour of passion, still they can recall the past; and nothing is more useless or unwise than these scenes of crimination and reproach, for we know that in all these cases, when the beloved object has ceased to charm, it is in vain to appeal to the feelings. You know that this is true. Every man almost has gone through it. My hon. gentleman does what he can to keep them quiet; he sometimes takes refuge in arrogant silence, and sometimes he treats them with haughty frigidity; and if they knew anything of human nature they would take the hint and shut their mouths. But they won't. And what then happens? What happens under all such circumstances? The right hon. gentleman, being compelled to interfere, sends down his valet, who says in the genteelest manner: "We can have no whining here". And that, sir, is exactly the case of the great agricultural interest—that beauty which everybody wooed and one deluded. There is a fatality in such charms, and we now seem to approach the catastrophe of her career. Protection appears to be in about the same condition that Protestantism was in 1828. The country will draw its moral. For my part, if we are to have free trade, I, who honour genius, prefer that such measures should be proposed by the hon. member for Stockport than by one who through skilful Parliamentary manoeuvres has tampered with the generous confidence of a great people and a great party. For myself, I care not what may be the result. Dissolve, if you please, the Parliament you have betrayed. For me there remains this at least—the opportunity of expressing thus publicly my belief that a Conservative Government is an organised hypocrisy.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1845/mar/17/agricultural-interest in the House of Commons (17 March 1845). 1840s

Love, People, Pleasure, Beauty

“It is important to do everything with passion, it embellishes life enormously.”

Lev Landau (1908–1968) Soviet physicist

Главное, делайте всё с увлечением, это страшно украшает жизнь.
in a letter to his niece Maya Bessarab, as quoted by her in [Lev Landau, biography, Moscovskiy Rabochiy (Moscow Worker), 1971]

Life

“The passions, whether violent or not, should never be so expressed as to reach the point of causing disgust; and music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

Letter by Mozart, as quoted in a journal entry (12 December 1856) The Journal of Eugene Delacroix as translated by Walter Pach (1937), p. 521. The quote is not found in any authentic letter by Mozart.

Pain, Music

“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Squares and Oblongs, in Poets at Work (1948), p. 170

Love, Personality

“The falsest of all philosophies is that which, under the pretext of delivering men from the embarrassment of their passions, counsels idleness and the abandonment and neglect of themselves.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 172.

Men

“When I reflect upon my life, I can clearly see how my passion for running has dominated my life. The images that flash through my mind are those running…. running…running…”

Milkha Singh (1935) Indian track and field athlete

The Race of My Life: An Autobiography Milkha Singh (2013)

Life

“This first stage of the life of the whole race is savagery, raw nature:… a condition in which man enjoys the most exquisite goods, equality and freedom, in full abundance, and would also enjoy them forever, if he would follow the hint of nature and understand the art of not abusing his powers and preventing the outbreak of his excessive passions.”

Adam Weishaupt (1748–1830) German philosopher and founder of the Order of Illuminati

Die neuesten Arbeiten des Spartacus und Philo in dem Illuminaten-Orden (1794) pp. 20-21.

Life, Art, Understanding, Nature

“I enjoy challenging a person's ideas. No one loves a good and passionately fought argument more than I do. This isn't about being tough-minded and straightforward. That's the job. But so is sensing when to hug and when to kick. Of course, arrogant people who refuse to learn from their mistakes have to go. If we're managing good people who are clearly eating themselves up over an error, our job is to help them through it. That doesn't mean you have to take it easy on your top performers.”

Jack Welch (1935) American executive: General Electric CEO

Source: Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001), Ch. 3.

Love, People, Error, Idea

“We keep falling into the same ditches, you know? I mean, we learn more and more about the physical universe, more about our own bodies, more technology, but somehow, down through history, we go on building empires of one kind or another, then destroying them in one way or another. We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger, and set the stage for the next war. And when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that’s the way things are. That’s the way things always have been.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Talents

Source: Parable of the Talents (1998), Chapter 20 (p. 392)

Hunger, War, People, Stupidity

“If I cannot offer some relief to our world, if I cannot inspire our generation to join me, then I feel I am a complete waste of space. This constant fear of feeling irrelevant in our society has been the catalyst behind all my efforts and passions for as long as I can remember.”

Masiela Lusha (1985) Albanian actress, writer, author

Quoted by Masiela Lusha in a 2009 press conference http://www.masielalusha.com/board.php

World, Fear, Feeling, Effort

“Pornography reveals that male pleasure is inextricably tied to victimizing, hurting, exploiting; that sexual fun and sexual passion in the privacy of the male imagination are inseparable from the brutality of male history. The private world of sexual dominance that men demand as their right and their freedom is the mirror image of the public world of sadism and atrocity that men consistently and self-righteously deplore. It is in the male experience of pleasure that one finds the meaning of male history.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

p 69.
Pornography, Men Possessing Women (1979)

Men, Pleasure, World, Imagination

“I eagerly await tomorrow's mail to have news of Russia and Poland. For now, I have to content myself with a few vague rumors which float around. I have heard about new, bloody skirmishes in Poland between the people and troops; I was told that, even in Russia, there was a conspiracy against the czar and the whole royal family.
I am equally passionate about the struggle between the North and the Southern American states. Of course, my heart goes out to the North. But alas! It is the South who acted with the most force, wisdom, and solidarity, which makes them worthy of the triumph they have received in every encounter so far. It is true that the South has been preparing for war for three years now, while the North has been forced to improvise. The surprising success of the ventures of the American people, for the most part happy; the banality of the material well being, where the heart is absent; and the national vanity, altogether infantile and sustained with very little cost; all seem to have helped deprave these people, and perhaps this stubborn struggle will be beneficial to them in so much as it helps the nation regain its lost soul. This is my first impression; but it could very well be that I will change my mind upon seeing things up close. The only thing is, I will not have enough time to examine really closely.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

Letter http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bakunin/letters/toherzenandogareff.html to Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen and Ogareff from San Francisco (3 October 1861); published in Correspondance de Michel Bakounine (1896) edited by Michel Dragmanov

Wisdom, War, People, Family

“Some years ago Professor Bixler reminded us of the danger of overstressing the well-adjusted life. Everybody passionately seeks to be well-adjusted. We must, of course, be well-adjusted to avoid neurotic schizophrenic personalities, but there are some things in our world to which men of goodwill must be maladjusted. I confess that I never intend to become adjusted to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination, to the moral degeneracy of religious bigotry and the corroding effects of narrow sectarianism, to economic conditions that deprive men of work and food, and the to the insanities of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 2 : Transformed nonconformist

Life, Men, World, Food

“Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

"The Reaction in Germany" (1842)
Often paraphrased as, "The urge to destroy is also a creative urge"
Context: We exhort the compromisers to open their hearts to truth, to free themselves of their wretched and blind circumspection, of their intellectual arrogance, and of the servile fear which dries up their souls and paralyzes their movements.
Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!

Life

“You men do not understand the delights of a glance, of a pressure of the hand… but as for me, I swear to you that, when I listen to your voice, I feel such a deep, strange bliss that the most passionate kisses could not take its place.”

Mikhail Lermontov book A Hero of Our Time

A Hero of Our Time (1840; rev. 1841)

Men, Feeling, Understanding, Kiss

“Beside themselves with passion, some of them would not be backward even about scheming to suppress and silence their adversaries.”

Galileo Galilei book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

Source: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), p. 322
Context: In the long run my observations have convinced me that some men, reasoning preposterously, first establish some conclusion in their minds which, either because of its being their own or because of their having received it from some person who has their entire confidence, impresses them so deeply that one finds it impossible ever to get it out of their heads. Such arguments in support of their fixed idea as they hit upon themselves or hear set forth by others, no matter how simple and stupid these may be, gain their instant acceptance and applause. On the other hand whatever is brought forward against it, however ingenious and conclusive, they receive with disdain or with hot rage — if indeed it does not make them ill. Beside themselves with passion, some of them would not be backward even about scheming to suppress and silence their adversaries.

Silence

“Passion and prejudice govern the world; only under the name of reason.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Letter to John Benson (5 October 1770); published in Wesley's Select Letters (1837), p. 207
General sources
Context: Passion and prejudice govern the world; only under the name of reason. It is our part, by religion and reason joined, to counteract them all we can.

World

“Our passions and desires are unruly, but our character subdues these elements into a harmonious whole.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Interview with Einstein (1930)
Context: Our passions and desires are unruly, but our character subdues these elements into a harmonious whole. Does something similar to this happen in the physical world? Are the elements rebellious, dynamic with individual impulse? And is there a principle in the physical world which dominates them and puts them into an orderly organization? … It is the constant harmony of chance and determination which makes it eternally new and living.

“Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity — these three — and a place in society where no one of the three can be exercised?”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

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!

Women, Exercises

“My inspiration has been drawn from trees, from waves, from clouds, from the sympathies that exist between passion and the storm, between gentleness and the soft breeze, and the like, and I always endeavour to put into my movements a little of that divine continuity which gives to the whole of nature its beauty and its life.”

Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American dancer and choreographer

As quoted in Modern Dancing and Dancers (1912) by John Ernest Crawford Flitch, p. 105.
Context: To seek in nature the fairest forms and to find the movement which expresses the soul of these forms — this is the art of the dancer. It is from nature alone that the dancer must draw his inspirations, in the same manner as the sculptor, with whom he has so many affinities. Rodin has said: "To produce good sculpture it is not necessary to copy the works of antiquity; it is necessary first of all to regard the works of nature, and to see in those of the classics only the method by which they have interpreted nature." Rodin is right; and in my art I have by no means copied, as has been supposed, the figures of Greek vases, friezes and paintings. From them I have learned to regard nature, and when certain of my movements recall the gestures that are seen in works of art, it is only because, like them, they are drawn from the grand natural source.
My inspiration has been drawn from trees, from waves, from clouds, from the sympathies that exist between passion and the storm, between gentleness and the soft breeze, and the like, and I always endeavour to put into my movements a little of that divine continuity which gives to the whole of nature its beauty and its life.

Life, Beauty, Nature, Tree

“Do grant, O my Lord Jesus, that when my lips approach Thine to kiss Thee, I may taste the gall that was given Thee. And when my shoulders lean against Thine, make me feel Thy scourgings. And when my flesh is united with Thine in the Holy Eucharist, make me feel Thy Passion. And when my head comes near to Thine, make me feel Thy thorns. And when my heart is close to Thine, make me feel Thine embrace.”

Gemma Galgani (1878–1903) ITALIANA

Quoted in The Life of St. Gemma Galgani by her spiritual director Ven. Germanus, trans. A. M. O'Sullivan, 1999, p. 258.

Kiss, Heart, Making love, Feeling

“I know this sounds crazy, but once I find something I want to do, nobody's stopping me. If I don't know how to sew, and I really had that passion to sew, that's it, I'm going to sew. That's also with acting. So here I am.”

Millie Bobby Brown (2004) British actress

Source: "How ‘Stranger Things’ Star Millie Bobby Brown Made Eleven ‘Iconic’ and Catapulted Into Pop Culture" https://variety.com/2017/tv/features/millie-bobby-brown-stranger-things-season-2-eleven-1202602487/. Variety. (October 31, 2017).

“If what you seek is Truth, there is one thing you must have above all else.” “I know. An overwhelming passion for it.” “No. An unremitting readiness to admit you may be wrong.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Truth

“Getting lost was not a matter of geography so much as identity, a passionate desire, even an urgent need, to become no one and anyone, to shake off the shackles that remind you who you are, who others think you are.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

Source: A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Thinking

“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Justice, Suffering

“We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”

Henry James book The Middle Years

Source: The Middle Years (1893).

Art, Madness

“Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Source: Works of Samuel Johnson

“Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Literature

“Passion is the love of turning being into action. It fuels the engine of creation. It changes concepts to experience…. Never deny passion, for that is to deny Who You Are, and Who You Truly Want To Be.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Love, Change

“The need to go astray, to be destroyed, is an extremely private, distant, passionate, turbulent truth.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Truth, Distant

“His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Love, Madness

“work. play. passion.”

Jim Clark (1936–1968) British racecar driver

Source: Making Friends with Candy

“She was at that modulating point between indifference and love, at the stage called having a fancy for. It occurs once in the history of the most gigantic passions, and it is a period when they are in the hands of the weakest will.”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Source: The Return of the Native

Love, History, Indifference

“I don't want to express alienation. It isn't what I feel. I'm interested in various kinds of passionate engagement. All my work says be serious, be passionate, wake up.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

"Susan Sontag Finds Romance" http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/02/books/booksspecial/sontag-romance.html?ex=1168146000&en=d224e29f399a3317&ei=5070, interview with by Leslie Garis, The New York Times (2 August 1992)

Feeling

“A passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Pleasure, Secret

“The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“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 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 book My Uncle Oswald

Source: My Uncle Oswald (1979)

Love, Life, Speed

“I am still so naïve; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don’t ask me who I am. A passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe?”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Girl

“How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Gaudy Night

Source: Gaudy Night

“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1960s, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (1967-1969)
Context: Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

Love, Life, Search, Knowledge

“More than two millennia later…. Hawthorne puts forward a similar vision: A woman must bring the 'new truth…. in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness' (The Scarlet Letter p.241)…. With the brilliant economy of the letter A, he demonstrates why this vision is doomed to failure. The very passion that renders a woman able to see through the "iron framework" of Puritanism also disables her by causing her to be seen in the eyes of the Puritans as an impure woman, a woman who has been adulterated. This double vision… at once frees and imprisons women.”

Carol Gilligan (1936) American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist

Women, Truth, Failure, Happiness

“She had a passion for secrecy, but she herself was merely a Sphinx without a secret.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Secret

“Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its highest. Live in fragments no longer.”

E.M. Forster book Howards End

Source: Howards End (1910), Ch. 22
Context: Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.

Love

“The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Letter to the Editor, Dublin Daily Express (27 February 1895)

Mood, Heart

“Your profession is not what brings home your weekly paycheck, your profession is what you're put here on earth to do, with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Home

“Passion cannot be beautiful without excess; one either loves too much or not enough.”

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

Love, Beauty

“Some loves have to be given up, others have to be forgotten. Strange as it may sound, if you think of me as a monster, but I can love most passionately. I do not think of myself as evil.”

Christopher Pike book The Last Vampire

Source: The Last Vampire

Love, Thinking, Evil

“No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”

Edmund Burke book A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

Part II Section II
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)

Fear

“One of the most powerful of all our passions is the desire to be admired and respected.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: Sceptical Essays

“Nothing is more essential, than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular Nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

1790s, Farewell Address (1796)
Source: The Papers Of George Washington
Context: Nothing is more essential, than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular Nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests.

Feeling