Quotes about passion
page 16

“God is my mentor. He has given me all that I have … the passion, perseverance and patience to endure the challenges set before me. I know as long as I keep the faith, He will look out for my best interests.”

Iris Kyle (1974) American bodybuilder

2008-04-08
Iris Kyle, Ms. Olympia
IFBBPRO.com
Internet
http://www.ifbbpro.com/features/iris-kyle-ms-olympia/
Sourced quotes, 2008

God, Faith, Patience, Perseverance

“But they lived those extraordinary lives that can never be lived again. And in the living of them, they gave me a history that is more profound, more beautiful, more powerful, more passionate, and ultimately more useful, than the best damn history book I ever read.”

Utah Phillips (1935–2008) American labor organizer, folk singer, storyteller and poet

Track 13: "The Long Memory." Fellow Workers, Righteous Babe Records (1999)

Books, Beauty, History, Reading

“I'm not for pretending that bad stuff doesn't exist, and a passion for justice and truth is a libertarian trait. But the idea of liberty should also reveal new forms of beauty in the world, astonishing evidence of order without dictate, lovely examples of innovation without planning, and other magical things. Surely these deserve some attention too.”

Jeffrey Tucker (1963) American writer

Love, Truth, World, Justice

“Which is the best,—
Beauty and glory, in a southern clime,
Mingled with thunder, tempest; or the calm
Of skies that scarcely change, which, at the least,
If much of shine they have not, have no storms?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Erinna
The Golden Violet (1827)
Variant: Which is the best,—
Beauty and glory, in a southern clime,
Mingled with thunder, tempest; or the calm
Of skies that scarcely change, which, at the least,
If much of shine they have not, have no storms?

Beauty, Change

“Was that really love? I saw all these passionate people reel about and drift haphazardly as if driven by a storm, the man filled with desire today, satiated on the morrow, loving fiercely and discarding brutally, sure of no affection and happy in no love…”

Hermann Hesse book Gertrud

Source: Gertrude (1910), p. 88

Love, Happiness, People

“Of all violent passions, the least unbecoming to a woman is love.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

De toutes les passions violentes, celle qui sied le moins mal aux femmes, c'est l'amour.
Maxim 466.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Love

“The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit — for gallantry in defeat — for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally-flags of hope and of emulation.
I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man, has no dedication nor any membership in literature.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1962)

Love, War, Hope, Literature

“The seething racial resentment in the Third World against the West — decades after independence and trillions in foreign aid — should cause second thoughts about opening our borders to mass immigration from that world. Not everyone coming here brings in his heart the passionate attachment to America we attribute to the peoples of Ellis Island.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2010s, State of Emergency (2006)

People, World, Heart

“The book of female logic is blotted all over with tears, and Justice in their courts is for ever in a passion.”

William Makepeace Thackeray book The Virginians

Source: The Virginians (1857-1859), Ch. 4.

Books, Justice, Tear

“I count my time working for Dortch Oldham as one of the most important formative experiences of my life… There is nothing that tests your commitment to a goal like getting a few doors closed in your face. Mr. Oldham taught legions of young people to communicate quickly, clearly and with passion, a lesson that has served me well in my life since then.”

Rick Perry (1950) 14th and current United States Secretary of Energy

2009-02-27
Dortch Oldham dies at 89
E. Thomas
Wood
Nashville Post
http://nashvillepost.com/news/2009/2/27/dortch_oldham_dies_at_89
2009

Life, People, Communication, Time

“I must give some attention to the delicate question of religion, on which I have touched already. In my father's generation this question still was discussed with passion. Since then a sort of truce has existed in the countries of the West, while in the communist states of the East atheism has been made into the State religion. It is not advisable to blow on the embers of such controversies. But as I am talking about the limitations of our physical world picture I cannot but say that I do not believe in transgressions of the laws of nature. As these laws are of a statistical nature, and therefore allow deviations from the norm, I must define more clearly what I mean. The statistical deviations themselves obey certain laws. The miraculous events of religious tradition, however, are of a different kind, they lie on a different plane altogether; they are meant to prove something lying entirely beyond scientific consideration, such as the power of prayer, the intervention of divine power for or against certain men or nations.”

Max Born (1882–1970) physicist

Men, Lie, World, Religion

“Drug abuse is a lottery. I have never taken drugs and it is only by the grace of God that I did not turn to them. Their prohibition gives them a taboo quality and makes them attractive. I am just so disappointed and deeply unimpressed by this government. They are driven by pragmatism rather than taking a stand on the issue, having the confidence to do what needs to be done. They must be legalised. I believe that passionately.”

Ivor Tiefenbrun (1946) Scottish businessman

Cited from The Scotsman http://www.scotsman.com/news/scotland/top-stories/legalise-all-drugs-says-millionaire-tiefenbrun-1-1371780, 31 March 2002. <br class="br">2002

God, Disappointment, Confidence

“(In writing Quiet) I was fueled by the same mix of passion and indignation that I imagine inspired Betty Friedan to publish The Feminine Mystique in 1963. Introverts are to extroverts what women were to men at that time--second-class citizens with gigantic amounts of untapped talent. Our schools, workplaces, and religious institutions are designed for extroverts, and many introverts believe that there is something wrong with them and that they should try to "pass" as extroverts. The bias against introversion leads to a colossal waste of talent, energy, and happiness.”

Susan Cain (1968) self-help writer

Glor, Jeff (interviewer), "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking," by Susan Cain," CBS News, January 26, 2012.

Women, Men, Happiness, School

“Let the Turks now carry away their abuses, in the only possible manner, namely, by carrying off themselves. Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Bimbashis and Yuzbashis, their Kaimakams and their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall, I hope, clear out from the province that they have desolated and profaned. This thorough riddance, this most blessed deliverance, is the only reparation we can make to those heaps and heaps of dead, the violated purity alike of matron and of maiden and of child; to the civilization which has been affronted and shamed; to the laws of God, or, if you like, of Allah; to the moral sense of mankind at large. There is not a criminal in a European jail, there is not a criminal in the South Sea Islands, whose indignation would not rise and over-boil at the recital of that which has been done, which has too late been examined, but which remains unavenged, which has left behind all the foul and all the fierce passions which produced it and which may again spring up in another murderous harvest from the soil soaked and reeking with blood and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crime and shame. That such things should be done once is a damning disgrace to the portion of our race which did them; that the door should be left open to their ever so barely possible repetition would spread that shame over the world!”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

1870s

God, World, Law, Hope

“There exists in our country a solid continuity of Bonapartism, where the vocation for grandeur of France, the monarchist tradition, and the passion for national unity, the Jacobin tradition get together.”

François Mitterrand book Le Coup d'État permanent

Le Coup d'État permanent (1964) Part II, ch. 1

Country

“The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“Liberty is a great celestial Goddess, strong, beneficent, and austere, and she can never descend upon a nation by the shouting of crowds, nor by arguments of unbridled passion, nor by the hatred of class against class.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

The Political Thought of Annie Besant http://books.google.co.in/books?id=p-j4fWQxpGIC&pg=PA104, p. 104

Strong

“It has been extremely edifying to hear of the good theories of duty and morality and piety which the various religions advocate. I will put them all on one basis, Christian and Jewish and ethnic, which they all promulgate to mankind. But what I think we want now to do is to inquire why the practice of all nations, our own as well as any other, is so much at variance with these noble precepts? These great founders of religion have made the true sacrifice. They have taken a noble human life, full of every human longing and passion and power and aspiration, and they have taken it all to try and find out something about this question of what God meant man to be and does mean him to be. But while they have made this great sacrifice, how is it with the multitude of us? Are we making any sacrifice at all? We think it was very well that those heroic spirits should study, should agonize and bled for us. But what do we do?”

Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) American abolitionist, social activist, and poet

What is Religion? (1893)

Life, God, Religion, Question

“There are a thousand fanciful things
Linked round the young heart's imaginings.
In its first love-dream, a leaf or a flower
Is gifted then with a spell and a power:
A shade is an omen, a dream is a sign,
From which the maiden can well divine
Passion's whole history.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Title Poem
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Love, Dreams, Imagination, History

“Mind, I am not preaching anything contrary to accepted morality. I am not advocating free love in this or any other case. Society must go on, I suppose, and society can only exist if the normal, if the virtuous, and the slightly deceitful flourish, and if the passionate, the headstrong, and the too-truthful are condemned to suicide and to madness.”

Ford Madox Ford book The Good Soldier

Part Four, Ch. VI (p. 253)
The Good Soldier (1915)

Love, Truth, Suicide, Madness

“In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST : TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE.
Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extinction of that imposture, which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man. While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man's hand against him.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

Passage on Muhammad by an anonymous author in The American Annual Register for the Years 1827-8-9 (1830), edited by Joseph Blunt, Ch. X, p. 269. Robert Spencerattributed the authorship to Adams in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (2005), p. 83, but provided no clear documentation as to why this attribution was made.
Disputed

Life, Men, God, War

“He [ Michelangelo ] did not know a single one of the feelings of man, not one of his passions. When he was making an arm or a leg, it seems as if he were thinking only of that arm or leg and was not giving the slightest consideration to the way it relates with the action of the figure to which it belongs, much less to the action of the picture as a whole... Therein lies his great merit; he brings a sense of the grand and the terrible into even an isolated limb.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

quote in 1854, on the Italian Renaissance artist [[w:Michelangelo|Michelangelo, as cited in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 235
1831 - 1863

Way, Feeling, Thinking, Sense

“We are ne’er like angels till our passion dies.”

Thomas Dekker The Honest Whore

The Honest Whore (1604), Part ii, Act i. Sc. 2.

Angels

“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.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Vol. XIII, p. 251
Posthumous publications, The Collected Works

Love, Music, Literature, Thinking

“I have a passion for playing tennis and enjoy the workload and struggles of performing in this amazing global sport.”

Sania Mirza (1986) Indian tennis player

In Zee News: Winning Grand Slams is Sania's motivation after London Games http://zeenews.india.com/sports/tennis/winning-grand-slams-is-sania-s-motivation-after-london-games_747629.html, Zee News, August 17, 2012,

Sport

“I call him Rama. You can call him by any other name but have faith in him, surrender all worldly desires and passions to his will and without effort, become disciplined and principled.”

Tulsidas (1532–1623) Hindu poet-saint

Quoted in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 5

Faith, Effort

“But, whenever a portion of this facility we may suppose even the greatest Poet to possess, there cannot be a doubt that the language which it will suggest of him, must, in liveliness and truth, fall far short of that with is uttered by men in real life, under the actual pressure of these passions, certain shadows of which the poet thus produced, or feels to be produced, in himself. However exalted a notion we would wish to cherish of the character of a Poet, it is obvious, that, while he describes and imitates passions, his situation is altogether slavish and mechanical, compared with the freedom and power of real and substantial action and suffering.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Preface.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

Life, Men, Truth, Feeling

“The gesture of exposure characterizes the style of argumentation of ideology critique, from the critique of religion in the eighteenth century to the critique of fascism in the twentieth. Everywhere, one discovers extrarational mechanisms of opinion: interests, passions, fixations, illusions. That helps a bit to mitigate the scandalous contradiction between the postulated unity of truth and the factual plurality of opinions—since it cannot be eliminated. Under these assumptions, a true theory would be one that not only grounds its own theses best, but also knows how to defuse all significant and persistent counterpositions through ideology critique.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 18

Truth, Religion, Help

“When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Preface
1900s, Getting Married (1908)

Death, People, Parting

“Oh. Marx's love for Shakespeare! It is well known. Chris Hani shared the same passion. I have just learned this and I like the idea. Even though Marx more often quotes Timon of Athens, the Manifesto seems to evoke or convoke, right from the start, the first coming of the silent ghost, the apparition of the spirit that does not answer, on those ramparts of Elsinore which is then the old Europe.”

Jacques Derrida book Specters of Marx

Injunctions of Marx
Specters of Marx (1993)

Love, Quotes, Idea, Learning

“I did not choose my gift: too soon my heart,
Watch-like, had pointed to a later hour
Than time had reach'd: and as my years pass'd on,
Shadows and floating visions grew to thoughts,
And thoughts found words, the passionate words of song,
And all to me was poetry.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

A History of the Lyre
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Time, Heart

“No doubt, the poetry, overjoyed by swallowing the beverage of passionate thoughts, delights the mind. But she does not realize the sorrows and troubles of the poor. Forget depicting the beauty of passions and present your poetry as a necklace of thought gems to swell the soul.”

Manmohan Acharya (1967–2013) Poet, lyricist

Stanza-3, Verse-1
Song of the Bumblebee (2008)

Beauty, Soul, Forgetting

“[the process of painting.. ].. is conceived of as an adventure, without preconceived ideas on the part of persons of intelligence, sensibility, and passion. Fidelity to what occurs between oneself and the canvas, no matter how unexpected, becomes central.... the major decisions in the process of painting are on the grounds of truth, not taste…”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

The School of New York, exhibition catalogue, Perls Gallery, 1951; as quoted in the New York School – the painters & sculptors of the fifties, Irving Sandler, Harper & Row Publishers, 1978, p. 46
1950s

Truth, Intelligence, Idea, Decision

“To spread healthy ideas among even the lowest classes of people, to remove men from the influence of prejudice and passion, to make reason the arbiter and supreme guide of public opinion; that is the essential goal of the sciences; that is how science will contribute to the advancement of civilization, and that is what deserves protection of governments who want to insure the stability of their power.”

Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) French naturalist, zoologist and paleontologist (1769–1832)

Rapport historique sur les progrès des sciences naturelles http://books.google.com/books?id=ajsyAQAAMAAJ (1810) as quoted in Clifford D. Conner, A People's History of Science (2005)

Men, People, Idea, Science

“Political equality is not merely a folly – it is a chimera. It is idle to discuss whether it ought to exist; for, as a matter of fact, it never does. Whatever may be the written text of a Constitution, the multitude always will have leaders among them, and those leaders not selected by themselves. They may set up the pretence of political equality, if they will, and delude themselves with a belief of its existence. But the only consequences will be, that they will have bad leaders instead of good. Every community has natural leaders, to whom, if they are not misled by the insane passion for equality, they will instinctively defer. Always wealth, in some countries by birth, in all intellectual power and culture, mark out the men whom, in a healthy state of feeling, a community looks to undertake its government. They have the leisure for the task, and can give it the close attention and the preparatory study which it needs. Fortune enables them to do it for the most part gratuitously, so that the struggles of ambition are not defiled by the taint of sordid greed. They occupy a position of sufficient prominence among their neighbours to feel that their course is closely watched, and they belong to a class brought up apart from temptations to the meaner kinds of crime, and therefore it is no praise to them if, in such matters, their moral code stands high. But even if they be at bottom no better than others who have passed though greater vicissitudes of fortune, they have at least this inestimable advantage – that, when higher motives fail, their virtue has all the support which human respect can give. They are the aristocracy of a country in the original and best sense of the word. Whether a few of them are decorated by honorary titles or enjoy hereditary privileges, is a matter of secondary moment. The important point is, that the rulers of the country should be taken from among them, and that with them should be the political preponderance to which they have every right that superior fitness can confer. Unlimited power would be as ill-bestowed upon them as upon any other set of men. They must be checked by constitutional forms and watched by an active public opinion, lest their rightful pre-eminence should degenerate into the domination of a class. But woe to the community that deposes them altogether!”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Quarterly Review, 112, 1862, pp. 547-548
1860s

Men, Feeling, Communication, Motivation

“What, then, shall we do? someone may ask. What else, indeed, than devote ourselves to the care of our souls, keeping all our leisure free from other things. Accordingly, we should not be slaves of the body, except so far as is strictly necessary; but our souls we should supply with all things that are best, through philosophy freeing them, as from a prison, from association with the passions of the body.”

Basil of Caesarea (329–379) Christian Saint

Source: On Greek Literature, p. 415

Soul

“Seeing this False Christ, in fury and passion
I made my voice heard all over the nation.
…
I am sure this Jesus will not do
Either for Englishman or Jew.”

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

1810s, The Everlasting Gospel (c. 1818)

Christ, Falseness

“It is, thank heaven, difficult if not impossible for the modern European to fully appreciate the force which fanaticism exercises among an ignorant, warlike and Oriental population. Several generations have elapsed since the nations of the West have drawn the sword in religious controversy, and the evil memories of the gloomy past have soon faded in the strong, clear light of Rationalism and human sympathy. Indeed it is evident that Christianity, however degraded and distorted by cruelty and intolerance, must always exert a modifying influence on men's passions, and protect them from the more violent forms of fanatical fever, as we are protected from smallpox by vaccination. But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since, its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness. In a moment the fruits of patient toil, the prospects of material prosperity, the fear of death itself, are flung aside. The more emotional Pathans are powerless to resist. All rational considerations are forgotten. Seizing their weapons, they become Ghazis—as dangerous and as sensible as mad dogs: fit only to be treated as such. While the more generous spirits among the tribesmen become convulsed in an ecstasy of religious bloodthirstiness, poorer and more material souls derive additional impulses from the influence of others, the hopes of plunder and the joy of fighting. Thus whole nations are roused to arms. Thus the Turks repel their enemies, the Arabs of the Soudan break the British squares, and the rising on the Indian frontier spreads far and wide. In each case civilisation is confronted with militant Mahommedanism. The forces of progress clash with those of reaction. The religion of blood and war is face to face with that of peace. Luckily the religion of peace is usually the better armed.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Story of the Malakand Field Force

The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (1898), Chapter III.
Early career years (1898–1929)

Death, Men, War, People

“For myself as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was an admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever. Similar tactics had been adopted during the eighteenth century and for the same reasons… The men of the new Enlightenment, which occurred in the middle years of the nineteenth century, once again used meaninglessness as a weapon against the reactionaries. The Victorian passion for respectability was, however, so great that, during the period when they were formulated, neither Positivism nor Darwinism was used as a justification for sexual indulgence.”

Aldous Huxley book Ends and Means

Ends and Means (1937)

Men, People, World, Way

“Instant unconsciousness had been my greatest passion for ten years.”

Oscar Levant book The Memoirs of an Amnesiac

The Memoirs of an Amnesiac (1965)

“Painting, like passion, is a living voice, which, when I hear it, I must let it speak, unfettered.”

Barnett Newman (1905–1970) American artist

Barnett Newman, in The New American Painting, exhibition catalogue May 28 - Sept 8. 1959; republished in: Barnett Newman, John Philip O'Neill. (1992). Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews. p. 160
1950 - 1960

Painting

“I will take leave to read to the house a few figures which show the amazing, the unprecedented growth which has not perhaps a parallel in the annals of the past, of the military power of our neighbours within the past three or four years… From January 1861 to January 1863 the army of 10,000 was increased to 800,000… In January 1861 the ships of war belonging to the United States were 83; in December 1864 they numbered 671…
These are frightful figures for the capacity of destruction they represent, for the heaps of carnage that they represent, for the quantity of human blood spilt that they represent, for the lust of conquest that they represent, for the evil passions that they represent, and for the the arrest of onward progress that they represent.”

Thomas D'Arcy McGee (1825–1868) Canadian politician

Legislative Assembly, February 9, 1865

War, Evil, Reading, Past

“If a man is as passionate, malicious, resentful, sullen, moody, or morose, after his conversion as before it, what is he converted from or to?”

John Angell James (1785–1859) British abolitionist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 115.

“A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects, those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers.”

Fred Brooks No Silver Bullet

Page 202.
No Silver Bullet (1986)

Parting

“Whether game theory leads to clear-cut solutions, to vague solutions, or to impasses, it does achieve one thing. In bringing techniques of logical and mathematical analysis gives men an opportunity to bring conflicts up from the level of fights, where the intellect is beclouded by passions, to the level of games, where the intellect has a chance to operate.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Source: 1960s, "The Use and Misuse of Game Theory," 1962, p. 114

Men, Game, Mathematics, Chance

“I’ve got a fierce passion for politics but I can’t stand the smarmy, hypocritical upper-middle-class dictator nation that prevails and has always prevailed in this country. I’m up for petrol bombers, mate, and fighting in the streets.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

Metro, August 25, 2006
Music and politics

Fight, Country

“Only passions can raise a man above the level of the animal.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

The Art of Writing

Animals

“Teachers … preach “the superiority of the intelligence”; but they preach it because in their opinion it is the intelligence which shows us the actions required for our interests, i. e. from exactly the same passion for the practical.”

Julien Benda (1867–1956) French essayist

Source: Treason of the Intellectuals (1927), p. 151

Intelligence, Teachers

“A pure Democracy, by which I mean a Society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the Government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of Government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of Government, have erroneously supposed, that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Federalist No. 10
1780s, Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

Death, Democracy, Communication, Time

“The man writes with such genuine passion for the books he's discussing. With so many critics you feel they're writing so people will say they're good critics.”

William Empson (1906–1984) English literary critic and poet

W. H. Auden, recorded in Alan Ansen (ed. Nicholas Jenkins) The Table Talk of W. H. Auden (London: Faber, 1991) p. 44.
Criticism

People, Books, Feeling

“At this point, here is a parenthesis about the life of the author, which joined the deed to the word: Hélène included to the book on her father, a very short Appendix, "Le devoir d'abolir la guerre", which was taken from the second volume of the Germen works or Spir, and had previously been reproduced, I quote, "in the Jounal de Genève, 15 November 1920, at the time of the maiden Assembly of the United Nations, which Spir has, lately (not long ago, "naguère", Fr.) so much called for (or invite to think about) of all his wishes." ("tant appelée de ses voeux", Fr). The following is a footnote added to this text, that Spir published in the first edition of Recht und Unrecht, in 1879, as an Appendix, under the title of "Considération sur la guerre" - and which was published again in 1931, in Propos sur la guerre. : "To declare (or say) that the establishment of international institutions intended (or used) to settle (or solve) conflicts among people without having recourse to war, this is purely gratuitious affirmation. What sense (or meaning) can it be to declare impossible, something that has been neither wished (or wanted, "voulue", Fr.) seriously, nor tried to put into practice? In truth, there are not any impossibility here, no more of a material order than of a metaphysical order. ("En vérité, il n'y a ici aucun impossibilité, pas plus d'ordre matériel que d'ordre métaphysique", Fr). Supposing that all responsible potentates, ministers and leaders were to be warned (or were given formal notice? - "soient mis en demeure de", Fr.) to agree concerning the establishment (or creation) of international organizations with peaceful workings ("à rouages pacifiques", Fr.), they would not be very long to come to an agreement on the ways and means ("voies et moyens", Fr.) to come to settle the problem. And, indeed, how insoluble could be a problem, that requires nothing else than some good will here and there? It is not a question here of fighting against a terrestrial power, hostile to human beings and independent of their will; it is only for men a matter of overcoming their own passions, et their harmful prejudices. ("En cela", Fr.) In this, would it be more difficult than to kill one's fellow men by the hundred of thousands, de destroy entire (or whole) countries et inflict (or impose) crushing expanses to one own people?"”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), pp. 64-65 - end of parenthesis.

Life, Men, Hostility, War

“It has always been my ambition since childhood to live such a life that one day my fellow citizens would call me to membership in this popular branch of the greatest lawmaking body in the world. Out of their confidence and partiality they have done this. It is now my sole purpose here to help enact such wise and just laws that our common country will by virtue of these laws be a happier and a more prosperous country. I have always dreamed of a country which I believe this should be and will be, and that is one in which the citizenship is an educated and patriotic people, not swayed by passion and prejudice, and a country that shall know no East, no West, no North, no South, but inhabited by a people liberty loving, patriotic, happy, and prosperous, with its lawmakers having no other purpose than to write such just laws as shall in the years to come be of service to human kind yet unborn.”

Sam Rayburn (1882–1961) lawmaker from Bonham, Texas

Maiden speech in the House (May 6, 1913); reported in Congressional Record, vol. 50, p. 1249.

Love, Life, Happiness, People

“I never thought I'd be an action star, but now they're going to make little Xena action figures for kids. I still want to be a fine actress one day; it's just a matter of putting in the time and passion.”

Lucy Lawless (1968) New Zealand actress

Walt Belcher (May 25, 1996) "'Reformed villain' cuts men to size", The Tampa Tribune, p. 1.

Star, Time

“But the most lasting agony of this war was suffered, not by the defeated, but by the victors. For when their passion had cooled the Americans could not easily disguise from themselves that they had committed murder. They were not at heart a brutal folk, but rather a kindly. They liked to think of the world as a place of innocent pleasure-seeking, and of themselves as the main purveyors of delight. Yet they had been somehow drawn into this fantastic crime; and henceforth an all-pervading sense of collective guilt warped the American mind. They had ever been vainglorious and intolerant; but now these qualities in them became extravagant even to insanity. Both as individuals and collectively, they became increasingly frightened of criticism, increasingly prone to blame and hate, increasingly self-righteous, increasingly hostile to the critical intelligence, increasingly superstitious.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last and First Men

Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter II: Europe’s Downfall; Section 3, “Europe Murdered” (p. 41)

Hate, Hostility, War, Pleasure

“Venerate four characters: the sanguine who has checked volatility and the rage for pleasure; the choleric who has subdued passion and pride; the phlegmatic emerged from indolence; and the melancholy who has dismissed avarice, suspicion and asperity.”

Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) Swiss poet

No. 609
Aphorisms on Man (c. 1788)

Pleasure, Rage

“Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Source: The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. III, Reason in Religion, Ch. VI

Religion, Lovers

“Shocked disbelief greets suggestions that many women may take pleasure in rape fantasies, established long ago by Nancy Friday in her pioneering 1973 study, My Secret Garden, and dramatized today by the staggering mass-market popularity of Harlequin Romances, where heroines are overwhelmed by passionate, impetuous men.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 37

Women, Men, Pleasure, Secret

“.. Every work of art is a transposition, a caricature, the passionate equivalent of a sensation received.”

Maurice Denis (1870–1943) French painter

Nouvelles théories sur l'art moderne..., 1922

Art

“The Autonomous. In the case of someone like Bertrand Russell or Toscanini, one feels an essential aliveness of spirit that reflexively keeps the body alive too, in the face of the inevitable physiological catabolisms. … Such men are not necessarily “balanced” or “well-adjusted” people: they may … get along well with very few people, or prefer the “company” of dead people. … One can see in such cases a passionate interest or preoccupation which has remained alive since childhood—though perhaps newly justified or rediscovered in middle life. … Such individuals are fairly immune to cultural changes, or to cultural definitions of their own physical changes: they carry their preservative, their “spirits,” within. … As long as the body does not actively prevent, these men are immortal because of their ability to renew themselves.”

David Riesman (1909–2002) American Sociologist

“Clinical and Cultural Aspects of the Aging Process,” pp. 484-485
Individualism Reconsidered (1954)

Life, Men, People, Feeling

“One of the stranger beliefs in science fiction is a passionate belief in Beautiful Writing--lots and lots of extraspecial exciting words thrown no hurled no CASCADED upon the reader in a shimmering shower of precious verbal gleaming gleanings and a singing pillar of righteous fiery syntactic spinach. The only thing that was good in that sentence was the spinach, and the hell with it.”

John Barnes (1957) American science fiction writer

That Style Thingie (1998 Essay)

Beauty, Hell, Science, Singing

“Grotesque sentiments such as the lust of business success or economic power of any kind, and indeed every purely self-regarding passion, from that of the social climber to that of the salvation-seeking ascetic, are experienced by the explorer with something of that shame which the child, emerging into adolescence, may feel toward the still-clinging fascination of his outgrown toys, or with such disgust as the youth may feel when he wakes from some unworthy sexual infatuation”

Olaf Stapledon book Last Men in London

Source: Last Men in London (1932), Chapter II: Exploring the Past.

Youth, Feeling, Business, Success

“Heaven preserve me from littleness and pleasantness and smoothness. Give me great glaring vices, and great glaring virtues, but preserve me from the neat little neutral ambiguities. Be wicked, be brave, be drunk, be reckless, be dissolute, be despotic, be a suffragette, be anything you like, but for pity's sake be it to the top of your bent. Live fully, live passionately, live disastrously. Let's live, you and I, as none have ever lived before.”

Violet Trefusis (1894–1972) English writer and socialite

to Vita Sackville-West, October 25, 1918
Author: Nigel Nicolson, Co-author: Victoria Sackville-West, Portrait of a Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, (1998), pg.148
Quotes to Sackville-West

“A long white dress that starts under the breast and travels on interminably down -- so their legs are entirely mysterious -- they could have one leg or two inside that dress… A Jane Austen woman could be incredibly passionate inside that dress.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

8 1/2 Women

Travel

“How important it is, then, that the child be taught to govern its passions! How important that it be taught to be kind, gentle, loving, and humane; and in all the range of human thought there is not a better, wiser, or more expedient way of accomplishing this end than by teaching kindness towards God's lower creatures. If children are thus taught they will have instilled into their hearts those principles of action which will make them kind and merciful not only to the lower animals, but also toward their fellow-men as they attain to manhood. Let them be taught that the lower animals are God's creatures, as they themselves are, put here by a common Heavenly Father, each for its own special purpose, and that they have the same right to life and protection. Let them be taught that principle recognised by all noble-hearted men, that it is only a depraved, debased, and cowardly nature that will injure an inferior, defenceless creature, simply because it is in its power to do so, and that there is no better, no grander test of true bravery and nobility of character than one's treatment of the lower animals.”

Ralph Waldo Trine (1866–1958) American author

Source: Every Living Creature (1899), pp. 6-7

Love, Life, Men, God

“America is dealing death, not only to people of other lands, but to its own people. So say the most thoughtful and passionate of our youth, from California to Connecticut.”

Charles A. Reich book The Greening of America

Source: The Greening of America (1970), Chapter I : The Coming American Revolution, p. 3, opening lines

Death, People, Youth

“Though Lewis' views frequently are well left of center on the political spectrum, his writing is moderate. Lewis is at once passionate and logical - great to argue with in your head.”

Anthony Lewis (1927–2013) American journalist

[Richard H., Weiss, November 5, 1998, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Times columnist likes to mine a vein of thought, G1]
About

“Passion isn't something that lives way up in the sky, in abstract dreams and hopes. It lives at ground level, in the specific details of what you're doing every day.”

Marcus Buckingham (1966) British writer

Author Marcus Buckingham, cited in: Michel Beaudry, " Sam Rees - making the Whistler leap http://www.piquenewsmagazine.com/whistler/sam-rees-making-the-whistler-leap/Content?oid=2519430," at piquenewsmagazine.com, November 28, 2013.

Dreams, Hope, Way

“One of the things a cartoon does is to express violent emotion and passion in a completely mechanical and removed style. To express this thing in a painterly style would dilute it; the techniques I use are not commercial, they only appear to be commercial – and the ways of seeing and composing and unifying are different and have different ends.”

Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997) American pop artist

Source: 1960's, What is Pop Art? Interviews with eight painters' (1963), pp. 25-27

Way, Appearance

“The best explanation I can give of what it is, is this: it is what God does through a rare combination of these qualities found in his people: Passion for his presence; A deep craving to reach the lost; Sincere integrity; Spirit-filled faith; Down-to-earth humility; Brokenness.”

Craig Groeschel (1967) American priest

It – How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It (2008, Zondervan)

God, People, Faith, Sincerity

“I am twisted with passion – plague on all the girls of the parish! since I suffered from trysts which went amiss, and could never win a single one of them, neither gentle hopeful maid, nor little lass, nor hag, nor wife.”

Dafydd ap Gwilym (1320–1380) Welsh poet

Plygu rhag llid yr ydwyf,
Pla ar holl ferched y plwyf!
Am na chefais, drais drawsoed,
Onaddun' yr un erioed
Na morwyn fwyn ofynaig,
Na merch fach, na gwrach, na gwraig.
"Merched Llanbadarn" (The Girls of Llanbadarn), line 1; translation from Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson (ed. and trans.) A Celtic Miscellany (Harmondsworth: Penguin, [1951] 1975) p. 209.

Hope, Girl, Suffering

“We are Wikipedians. This means that we should be: kind, thoughtful, passionate about getting it right, open, tolerant of different viewpoints, open to criticism, bold about changing our policies and also cautious about changing our policies. We are not vindictive, childish, and we don't stoop to the level of our worst critics, no matter how much we may find them to be annoying.”

Jimmy Wales (1966) Wikipedia co-founder and American Internet entrepreneur

Wikipedia-l mailing list (18 December 2005, 15:39 UTC)

Change

“I am more strongly confirmed than ever in the belief that the time devoted to chess is literally frittered away. It is, to be sure, a most exhilarating sport, but it is only a sport; and it is not to be wondered at that such as have been passionately addicted to the charming pastime should one day ask themselves whether sober reason does not advise its utter dereliction.”

Paul Morphy (1837–1884) American chess player

From Morphy's letter to Daniel Fiske, February 4, 1863 https://web.archive.org/web/20150722050734/http://www.edochess.ca/batgirl/Morphy_to_Fiske_Feb4.html

Sport, Time

“Declamation roared, while Passion slept.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Prologue at the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre (1747)

“Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, desires that all religions should reside everywhere, for all of them desire self-control and purity of heart. But people have various desires and various passions, and they may practice all of what they should or only a part of it. But one who receives great gifts yet is lacking in self-control, purity of heart, gratitude and firm devotion, such a person is mean.”

Ashoka (-304–-232 BC) Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty

Edicts of Ashoka (c. 257 BC)

God, People, Religion, Heart

“My children's books are written on the belief that every child has a talent and a passion. Each story unfolds into an adventure of nurturing that confidence until a passion blooms.”

Masiela Lusha (1985) Albanian actress, writer, author

On her purpose behind her books http://tolucantimes.info/section/inside-this-issue/young-author-makes-her-mark-in-the-world-of-children’s-literature/

Children, Books, Confidence

“People have many myths about anger that cause them to categorize the issue in a certain way. For instance, some people consider anger to be biological or hereditary, but this myth does not have any solid foundation. Although some people are more prone to anger due to their psychophysical make-up or emersion in the modes of passion and ignorance, their socialization or quality of association will have a greater impact on their reactions. Although we do bring forth other infl uences into a situation such as our karma, which affects the ways in which we respond to specifi c situations, it is a myth that anger is biological and a permanent, unchangeable aspect of the body.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior IV: Conquering the Enemies of the Mind (Hari-Nama Press, 2004), Chapter 3

People, Way, Anger

“No human being, even the most passionately loved and passionately loving, is ever in our possession.”

Albert Camus book The Rebel

Part 4: Rebellion and Art
The Rebel (1951)

Love

“[…] it’s much easier to achieve big dreams than it is small ones. Big dreams require big passion. And when you’ve got passion it’s easier to inspire others to come along and help you.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

p 261
21 Yaks And A Speedo (2013)

Dreams, Help

“The Man of "Radical" Understanding is not "entranced". He is not "elsewhere". He is not having an experience. He is not passionless and inoffensive. He is awake. He is present. He knows no obstruction in the form of mind, identity, differentiation and desire. He uses mind, identity, differentiation and desire. He is passionate. His quality is an offense to those who are entranced, elsewhere, contained in the mechanics of experience, asleep, living as various forms of identity, separation and dependence. He is acceptable only to those who understand."”

Adi Da Samraj (1939–2008) American writer

Page 421, 2004 Standard Edition.
The Knee of Listening

Understanding, Dependency

“In the human heart there is a perpetual generation of passions, such that the ruin of one is almost always the foundation of another.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Il y a dans le coeur humain une génération perpétuelle de passions, en sorte que la ruine de l'une est presque toujours l'établissement d'une autre.
Maxim 10.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Heart

“Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free. Once I knew only darkness and stillness. Now I know hope and joy. Once I fretted and beat myself against the wall that shut me in. Now I rejoice in the consciousness that I can think, act and attain heaven. My life was without past or future; death, the pessimist would say, "a consummation devoutly to be wished." But a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living. Night fled before the day of thought, and love and joy and hope came up in a passion of obedience to knowledge. Can anyone who has escaped such captivity, who has felt the thrill and glory of freedom, be a pessimist?”

Helen Keller book Optimism

Optimism (1903)

Love, Life, Death, Hope

“I don’t want to escape via intellectual ruses – I want affirmations via passionate embraces & you can’t have life unless you live it.”

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist

letter to Adelaide Kuntz, November 6, 1935; as quoted in Marsden Hartley, by Gail R. Scott, Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988, New York p. 169
1931 - 1943

Life

“I hate the PC, with a passion.”

Larry Ellison (1944) American internet entrepreneur, businessman and philanthropist

Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires (1996), 47"00.

Hate

“[Art is] a means to function thoroughly and passionately in a world that has a lot more to it than paint.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

Source: 1960's, The Bride and the Bachelors, (1962), p. 3

World, Art, Painting

“However arid and uninviting the prospect of a History of Medicine may appear at a distance, it will be found gradually to improve, and become full of interest wonder and animation as we proceed. …The History of Medicine is …the history of the human species, uncontaminated by those civil discords and fearful atrocities, those crimes and disorders which blot the page of other histories, and stamp man, created in the image of his maker, with the visage of a fiend and the heart of a brute. The History of Medicine, on the contrary, is the history of peace and good will, of endless harmony, and unceasing philanthropy. Instead of recording the desolations of war, and the growth of immorality—the deadly effects of human passions, and the bloody triumphs of senseless ambition—her province is to note the diminution of mortal suffering; and the only triumphs which she records are those obtained over sickness, death, and Sorrow.”

Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet (1788–1856) Scottish metaphysician (1788–1856)

The History of Medicine, Surgery, and Anatomy, from the Creation of the World, to the Commencement of the Nineteenth Century (1831), Vol. 1 https://books.google.com/books?id=ajBFAQAAMAAJ

Death, War, Fear, Peace

“From my youth upwards
My spirit walk'd not with the souls of men,
Nor look'd upon the earth with human eyes;
The thirst of their ambition was not mine,
The aim of their existence was not mine;
My joys, my griefs, my passions, and my powers
Made me a stranger.”

George Gordon Byron book Manfred

Act II, scene ii.
Manfred (1817)

Men, Youth, Soul, Joy

“Let me remind you that science is not necessarily wisdom. To know, is not the sole nor even the highest office of the intellect; and it loses all its glory unless it act in furtherance of the great end of man's life. That end is, as both reason and revelation unite in telling us, to acquire the feelings and habits that will lead us to love and seek what is good in all its forms, and guide us by following its traces to the first Great Cause of all, where only we find it pure and unclouded.
If science be cultivated in congruity with this, it is the most precious possession we can have— the most divine endowment. But if it be perverted to minister to any wicked or ignoble purpose — if it even be permitted to take too absolute a hold of the mind, or overshadow that which should be paramount over all, the perception of right, the sense of Duty — if it does not increase in us the consciousness of an Almighty and All-beneficent presence, — it lowers instead of raising us in the great scale of existence.
This, however, it can never do but by our fault. All its tendencies are heavenward; every new fact which it reveals is a ray from the origin of light, which leads us to its source. If any think otherwise, their knowledge is imperfect, or their understanding warped, or darkened by their passions. The book of nature is, like that of revelation, written by God, and therefore cannot contradict it; both we are unable to read through all their extent, and therefore should neither wonder nor be alarmed if at times we miss the pages which reconcile any seeming inconsistence. In both, too, we may fail to interpret rightly that which is recorded; but be assured, if we search them in quest of truth alone, each will bear witness to the other, — and physical knowledge, instead of being hostile to religion, will be found its most powerful ally, its most useful servant. Many, I know, think otherwise; and because attempts have occasionally been made to draw from astronomy, from geology, from the modes of the growth and formation of animals and plants, arguments against the divine origin of the sacred Scripture, or even to substitute for the creative will of an intelligent first cause the blind and casual evolution of some agency of a material system, they would reject their study as fraught with danger. In this I must express my deep conviction that they do injury to that very cause which they think they are serving.
Time will not let me touch further on the cavils and errors in question; and besides they have been often fully answered. I will only say, that I am here surrounded by many, matchless in the sciences which are supposed so dangerous, and not less conspicuous for truth and piety. If they find no discord between faith and knowledge, why should you or any suppose it to exist? On the contrary, they cannot be well separated. We must know that God is, before we can confess Him; we must know that He is wise and powerful before we can trust in Him, — that He is good before we can love Him. All these attributes, the study of His works had made known before He gave that more perfect knowledge of himself with which we are blessed. Among the Semitic tribes his names betoken exalted nature and resistless power; among the Hellenic races they denote his wisdom; but that which we inherit from our northern ancestors denotes his goodness. All these the more perfect researches of modern science bring out in ever-increasing splendour, and I cannot conceive anything that more effectually brings home to the mind the absolute omnipresence of the Deity than high physical knowledge. I fear I have too long trespassed on your patience, yet let me point out to you a few examples.
What can fill us with an overwhelming sense of His infinite wisdom like the telescope? As you sound with it the fathomless abyss of stars, till all measure of distances seems to fail and imagination alone gauges the distance; yet even there as here is the same divine harmony of forces, the same perfect conservation of systems, which the being able to trace in the pages of Newton or Laplace makes us feel as if we were more than men. If it is such a triumph of intellect to trace this law of the universe, how transcendent must that Greatest over all be, in which it and many like it, have their existence! That instrument tells us that the globe which we inhabit is but a speck, the existence of which cannot be perceived beyond our system. Can we then hope that in this immensity of worlds we shall not be overlooked? The microscope will answer. If the telescope lead to one verge of infinity, it brings us to the other; and shows us that down in the very twilight of visibility the living points which it discloses are fashioned with the most finished perfection, — that the most marvellous contrivances minister to their preservation and their enjoyment, — that as nothing is too vast for the Creator's control, so nothing is too minute or trifling for His care. At every turn the philosopher meets facts which show that man's Creator is also his Father, — things which seem to contain a special provision for his use and his happiness : but I will take only two, from their special relation to this very district. Is it possible to consider the properties which distinguish iron from other metals without a conviction that those qualities were given to it that it might be useful to man, whatever other purposes might be answered by them. That it should. be ductile and plastic while influenced by heat, capable of being welded, and yet by a slight chemical change capable of adamantine hardness, — and that the metal which alone possesses properties so precious should be the most abundant of all, — must seem, as it is, a miracle of bounty. And not less marvellous is the prescient kindness which stored up in your coalfields the exuberant vegetation of the ancient world, under circumstances which preserved this precious magazine of wealth and power, not merely till He had placed on earth beings who would use it, but even to a late period of their existence, lest the element that was to develope to the utmost their civilization and energy migbt be wasted or abused.
But I must conclude with this summary of all which I would wish to impress on your minds—* that the more we know His works the nearer we are to Him. Such knowledge pleases Him; it is bright and holy, it is our purest happiness here, and will assuredly follow us into another life if rightly sought in this. May He guide us in its pursuit; and in particular, may this meeting which I have attempted to open in His name, be successful and prosperous, so that in future years they who follow me in this high office may refer to it as one to be remembered with unmixed satisfaction.”

Thomas Romney Robinson

Robinson in his 1849 adress, as quoted in the Report of the Nineteenth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science https://archive.org/stream/report36sciegoog#page/n50/mode/2up, London, 1850.

Love, Life, Wisdom, Men

“Fierce boils in every vein
Indignant shame and passion blind,
The tempest of the lover's mind,
The soldier's high disdain.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book XII, p. 465

Lovers

“Our passions are like convulsion-fits, which, though they make us stronger for the time, leave us the weaker ever after.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)

Time

“It cannot be emphasized too strongly that playing can pull many a director and cast out of a tight spot, freeing all of them from the fear-producing trap of memorizing, characterizing and interpreting. This playing draws upon a very important, almost forgotten, little understood or utilized, and greatly maligned life-giving force --- passion!”

Viola Spolin (1906–1994) American academic and acting theorist

Theater Games for Rehearsal - A Director's Handbook(1988), Northwestern University Press, Preface

Life, Fear, Drawing

“[on Phil Anselmo] I think that he's probably one of the more enigmatic frontman of our time. He's tremendously inspirational to vocalists throughout the genre including myself. I know that there's some weirdness regarding the "incident," but I certainly know that Phil would have never in his darkest thoughts ever have wanted any harm to befall Dime. You know the world is a very, very extreme place. When a fan gets so connected to a band that the demise of the band, however they want to interpret it, leads them to question their own lives and their existence… I mean it's weird. There are too many types of music that inspire that passion in people and thankfully metal is one of them. It's just unfortunate that this animal happened to take the demise of Pantera so seriously that he felt that it was justification for him to do what he did. He took the life of probably one of the greatest guitar players to walk the face of the Earth.”

David Draiman (1973) American singer and songwriter

David Draiman talks disturbing thoughts http://www.concertlivewire.com/interviews/disturbed.htm, concertlivewire.com, 19 February 2005)

Life, People, World, Music

“She wanted to tell me. Maybe she even tried. But she couldn't. It wasn't because I was only twelve. It was because I was her child, created by her and Father because they wanted to be in bed together and nothing else would do, nobody else would do. You see? … Because to the child, he was not created by his mother's and his father's passion or capacity for it. He couldn't have been because he was there first, he came first, before the passion; he created the passion, not only it but the man and the woman who served it; his father is not his father but his son-in-law, his mother not his mother but his daughter-in-law if he is a girl. … and if a boy or a girl really is his father's and her mother's father-in-law or mother-in-law, which would make the girl her brother's mother no matter how much younger she was, then a girl with just one brother and him a twin at that, would maybe be his wife and mother too.”

William Faulkner book The Town

Charles Mallinson in Ch. 19; Charles Mallinson's mother, Maggie, and his uncle, Gavin Stevens, besides being their parents' only children, are twins.
The Town (1957)

Law, Girl, Boy, Daughters

“It is for the sake of order that I seduced Clytemnestra, for the sake of order that I killed my king. I wanted for order to rule and that it rule through me. I have lived without desire, without love, without hope: I made order. Oh! terrible and divine passion!”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Aegistheus, Act 2
The Flies (1943)

Love, Hope

“My passion for her, even though she could never return it, showed me the difference between inventing a lover and falling in love. The one is about you, the other about someone else.”

Jeanette Winterson book The Passion

The Passion (1987)

Love, Lovers

“We are able to discern not only what we already are, but what we may become, to see in ourselves germs and promises of a growth to which no bounds can be set, to dart beyond what we have actually gained to the idea of perfection as the end of our being. It is by this self-comprehending power that we are distinguished from the brutes, which give no signs of looking into themselves. Without this there would be no self-culture, for we should not know the work to be done; and one reason why self-culture is so little proposed is, that so few penetrate into their own nature. To most men, their own spirits are shadowy, unreal, compared with what is outward. When they happen to cast a glance inward, they see there only a dark, vague chaos. They distinguish, perhaps, some violent passion, which has driven them to injurious excess; but their highest powers hardly attract a thought; and thus multitudes live and die as truly strangers to themselves as to countries of which they have heard the name, but which human foot has never trodden.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Self-Culture (1838)

Men, Idea, Nature, Perfection

“Friendship's an abstract of this noble flame,
'Tis love refined and purged from all its dross,
The next to angel's love, if not the same,
As strong as passion is, though not so gross:
It antedates a glad eternity
And is an heaven in epitome.”

Katherine Philips (1632–1664) Anglo-Welsh poet and translator

st. 2
Poem LXIV: 'A Friend

Love, Friendship, Angels, Strong

“A passion for politics stems usually from an insatiable need, either for power, or for friendship and adulation, or a combination of both.”

Fawn M. Brodie (1915–1981) American historian and biographer

Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, ch. 1 (1974)

Friendship

“For what is a flower but life’s expressed passion for itself. Sudden and brief, but certain and eternal at the same time”

Alice Borchardt book The Dragon Queen

The Dragon Queen

Life, Flowers, Time

“It was the verdict of ancient writers that men afflict themselves in evil and weary themselves in the good, and that the same effects result from both of these passions. For whenever men are not obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition; which is so powerful in human breasts, that it never leaves them no matter to what rank they rise. The reason is that nature has so created men that they are able to desire everything but are not able to attain everything: so that the desire being always greater than the acquisition, there results discontent with the possession and little satisfaction to themselves from it. From this arises the changes in their fortunes; for as men desire, some to have more, some in fear of losing their acquisition, there ensues enmity and war, from which results the ruin of that province and the elevation of another.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book Discourses on Livy

Book 1, Ch. 37 Variant: Nature has so contrived that to men, though all things are objects of desire, not all things are attainable; so that desire always exceeds the power of attainment, with the result that men are ill-content with what they possess and their present state brings them little satisfaction. Hence arise the vicissitudes of their fortune. (as translated by LJ Walker and B Crick)
Discourses on Livy (1517)

Men, War, Fear, Nature

“Misled by fancy's meteor ray,
By passion driven;
But yet the light that led astray
Was light from heaven.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

The Vision, II, st. 18 (1786)

Light

Quotes about passion page 16

Quotes about passion
page 16