Quotes about passion (2174 quotes, page 17)

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Direct the six passions to God. The impulse of lust should be turned into the desire to have intercourse with Atman. Feel angry at those who stand in your way to God. Feel greedy for Him. If you must have the feeling of I and mine, then associate it with God. Say, for instance, "My Rama, my Krishna." If you must have pride, then feel like Bibhishana, who said, "I have touched the feet of Rama with my head; I will not bow this head before anyone else."”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 220

God , Way , Feeling

“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

“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

“Though I was too young to understand the complexities of marriage, I understand that the premise of their disagreement was unfair. Why must a woman have to give up her passion after marriage when the same is never asked of a man.”

Hema Malini (1948) Indian actress, dancer and politician

In the film Abhinetri where she played the role of dancer where after marriage she was expected to give up her career. Page 1976
MOTHER MAIDEN MISTRESS

Marriage , Understanding

“All passions that suffer themselves to be relished and digested are but moderate.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 2. Of Sorrow
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Suffering

“There were two times in my life that inspired me the most. The first was when I was a kid, probably the most emotionally influential time, when you’re naïve and innocent. I went to movie theaters and fell in love with genre films in the 1950s, when there was a big wave of monster movies. My passion came from the young guy who was watching The Fly back in 1958. Then, going to USC I began to watch movies in a different way and was exposed to different kinds of movies, foreign films. We had directors like Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks and John Ford come down and lecture us. It was unbelievable!”

John Carpenter (1948) American film director, screenwriter and producer

John Carpenter Q&A: Why ‘Halloween’ Didn’t Need Sequels & What Scares The Master Of Horror http://deadline.com/2014/10/john-carpenter-qa-halloween-sequels-michael-myers-861942/ (October 31, 2014)

Love , Life , Way , Guy

“Dialectics in many different forms has a surprisingly good press. Most people believe that struggle is very important and that it is important to be on the right side in a conflict…. Part of the difficulty is that the human race has an enormous and by no means unreasonable passion for the dramatic, and conflict is much more dramatic than production…. The awful truth about the universe - that it is not only rather a muddle, but also pretty dull - is wholly unacceptable to the human imagination. Nevertheless, it is the dull, nondialectical processes that hold the world together, that move it forward, and that provide the setting within which the dialectical processes take place. Evolution is the theatre, dialectics the play. It is a tragic error to mistake the play for the theatre, however, because that all too easily ends in the theatre burning down… Unless there is a reasonably widespread appreciation of the proper role of dialectical processes, these tend to get out of hand and become extremely destructive…. doing more harm than good.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1970s, Ecodynamics: A New Theory Of Societal Evolution, 1978, p. 266 as cited in: " Ecodynamics and societal evolution http://kairos.laetusinpraesens.org/83deval8_8_h_13" at Kairos @ Laetus-in-Praesens.org. Accessed Feb 25, 2012

People , Truth , World , Error

“Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

K 21
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook K (1789-1793)

God

“We're all capable if we have faith and passion.”

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

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

Faith

“In any case, the thought of a catastrophe or holocaust unleashed by accidental (i. e. nonhistorical) causes might be very unsettling to any Marxists who had a passionate belief in a deterministic theory of history. Instead of saying "It is inevitable that we will take over the world in fifty years", this Marxist would have to add, "Always assuming some capitalist fool doesn't press the button."”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

The Magnum Opus; On Thermonuclear War

World , Fools , History

“Why should we do as those who do not have other joys than to believe, as night falls, in their double beds... that it is to be great and sanctified by love to jostle the companions of their bed. Our passion must be like our love – illusory and artistic, having no other end than the desire to be beautiful. To remain beautiful in unsated [unstated? ] passion…”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

Love , Beauty , Joy , Night

“At this point, then, a junction is effected between the previously developed train of thought on countervailing passions and the doctrine of interest. Both doctrines originated in Machiavelli; yet the final outcome—the promotion of avarice to the position of the privileged passion given the job of taming the wild ones and of making in this fashion a crucial contribution to statecraft—would have greatly surprised and outraged him.”

Albert O. Hirschman (1915–2012) German-American economist; member of the French Resistance

The Passions and the Interests (1977) Part I. "How the Interests were Called Upon to Counteract the Passions".

Fashion , Training

“Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

On the first moon-landing, as quoted in The New York Times (21 July 1969)

God , Home , Star

“Joni uses a lot of alternate tunings; that is, instead of tuning the guitar in the customary way, she tunes the strings to pitches of her own choosing. …Joni will talk compellingly and passionately about alternate tunings for hours, comparing them to different colors that van Gogh used in his paintings.”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)

Color , Way , Painting

“There's no record industry, and so musicians I know, because I get mail from young musicians, I mean, they're really just struggling to survive, because they're not gonna get a record contract! So what are they doing? To survive? Like I did? I mean, okay I drove trucks, and sold caviar and repaired instruments just to survive. But in the end, you know, I'm in the studio, you know, recording rock music, pop music, whatever! Whatever gives me money to put in my, you know, food in my mouth. And so there's a lot of great musicians today, they're just looking for a gig! And what are the gigs that are going around? The gigs with pop bands or with smooth jazz, funky jazz, you know, a lot of this kind of cliched music. I'm sorry to criticize it like that, but I grew up with Tony (Williams) and you know Miles (Davis), (John) Coltrane, and real things, where there's blood all over the floor, blood all over the stage, that's what the passion's all about.”

John McLaughlin (1942) guitarist, founder of the Mahavishnu Orchestra

On record industry, as quoted in "John McLaughlin: State of the Musical Arts", by The Snapshots Foundation; directed by Jonathan Bewley, YouTube, Jul 11, 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utqp7ECKUl0

Money , Food , Music

“For love is a flattering mischief, that hath denied aged and wise men a foresight of those evils that too often prove to be the children of that blind father; a passion, that carries us to commit errors with as much ease as whirlwinds move feathers, and begets in us an unwearied industry to the attainment of what we desire.”

Izaak Walton (1593–1683) English author and biographer

Life of Dr. Donne (1640).

Love , Men , Children , Age

“754. Absence cools moderate Passions, but inflames violent ones.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“We are forced to distinguish between three kinds of speech: (1) The external, “rhetorical speech,” in the common meaning of this expression, which only refers to images because they affect the passions. Since these images do not stem from insight, however, they remain an object of opinion. This is the case of the purely emotive, false speech: “rhetoric” in the usual negative sense. (2) The speech which arises exclusively from a rational proceeding. It is true that this is of a demonstrative character, but it cannot have a rhetorical effect because purely rational arguments do not attain to the passions, i. e., “theoretical” speech in the usual sense. (3) The true rhetorical speech. This springs from the archai, nondeductible, moving, and indicative, due to its original images. The original speech is that of the wise man, of the sophos, who is not only epistetai, but who with insight leads, guides, and attracts.”

Ernesto Grassi (1902–1991) Italian philosopher

Source: Rhetoric as Philosophy (1980), p. 32

Spring , Sense , Falseness

“Religion is somewhere between fear and sex. And God? Truly? In his own right, without our voices speaking for him? Obsessed I think, but not passionate.”

Jeanette Winterson book The Passion

Source: The Passion (1987), p.74

God , Fear , Religion , Sex

“Among today's directors I'm of course impressed by Steven Spielberg and Scorsese, and Coppola, even if he seems to have ceased making films, and Steven Soderbergh — they all have something to say, they're passionate, they have an idealistic attitude to the filmmaking process. Soderbergh's Traffic is amazing. Another great couple of examples of the strength of American cinema is American Beauty and Magnolia.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

Jan Aghed interview (2002)

Beauty

“I want to thank Bernie Sanders. Bernie, your campaign inspired millions of Americans, particularly the young people who threw their hearts and souls into our primary. You've put economic and social justice issues front and center, where they belong. And to all of your supporters here and around the country: I want you to know, I've heard you. Your cause is our cause. Our country needs your ideas, energy, and passion. That's the only way we can turn our progressive platform into real change for America. We wrote it together – now let's go out there and make it happen together.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), (July 28, 2016)

People , Justice , Way , Soul

“I can't say that I love it with a fierce passion — indeed as a profession it's rather disappointing since it is not a profession at all, but rather a business service station and repair shop.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

On being a lawyer, as quoted by Claire Birge in The Stevensons : A Biography of an American Family (1997) by Jean H. Baker, p. 262

Love , Disappointment , Business

“The Church would have liked to turn to each of those thousand unbelievers separately, to show him that he was wrong, that he had allowed himself to be led astray by his passions, that he had everything to fear in the next life, and so forth. But it was not he, really, who had become disbelieving, it was his whole class, and it was his class consciousness which replied for him when he was addressed individually.”

Bernard Groethuysen (1880–1946) French literary historian, translator and writer

Source: The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), p. 25

Life , Fear

“My grandfather, P Morton Shand, […] declared that ‘A woman who cannot make soup should not be allowed to marry’. You might not agree with his rants, but there was no doubting his passion for proper food”

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (1947) second wife of Prince Charles

The Duchess of Cornwall during a speech for the launch of British Food Fortnight in London
A speech by HRH The Duchess of Cornwall to mark the launch of British Food Fortnight, Westminster Cathedral, London 22 April 2010 http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/media/speeches/speech-hrh-the-duchess-of-cornwall-mark-the-launch-of-british-food-fortnight

Food

“And I am very happy to have the boat motif because, when I grew up, in summer with my parents we were always in Massachusetts, and I was always by the sea. You know, sometimes little boys love cars, but I had a particular passion for boats, and now I live by the sea. For sure, it is a passage, but it's also very fascinating for lots of things. When you get interested in something you can find out a lot about things. You might meet people who are interested in one subject or another, like they collect palms. I've found people from all over the world who were fanatical about palms, which you wouldn't know unless you were interested in palms. And the sea: because, if you've noticed, the sea is white three quarters of the time, just white – early morning. Only in the fall does it get blue, because the haze is gone. The Mediterranean [where Twombly is living later in his life], at least – the Atlantic is brown – is just always white, white, white. And then, even when the sun comes up, it becomes a lighter white... Not because I paint it white; I'd have painted it white even if it wasn't, but I am always happy that I might have. It's something that has other consciousness behind it.”

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) American painter

Source: 2000 - 2011, Cy Twombly, 2000', by David Sylvester (June 2000), pp. 174-175

Love , Life , Happiness , People

“The passion for office among members of Congress is very great, if not absolutely disreputable, and greatly embarrasses the operations of the government. They create offices by their own votes and then seek to fill them themselves.”

James K. Polk (1795–1849) American politician, 11th President of the United States (in office from 1845 to 1849)

Diary entry (22 June 1846).

“The Democratic Party has to return to its populist base, to rediscover the party of FDR, the one that appealed to my grandfather and the factory workers and others. To do this, there must be a period of self-criticism. We must face this head-on or continue to be governed by the Republicans. We must examine how we set up the rise of Republicans on campuses, where the dissent should be coming from. It is explained by the lack of energy; and ideas from the other side. As a result, campuses are the most depressing places, devoid of passion.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Playboy interview (May 1995)

Idea

“There are no arguments. Can anyone who has reached the limit bother with arguments, causes, effects, moral considerations, and so forth? Of course not. For such a person there are only unmotivated motives for living. On the heights of despair, the passion for the absurd is the only thing that can still throw a demonic light on chaos. When all the current reasons — moral, esthetic, religious, social, and so on — no longer guide one's life, how can one sustain life without succumbing to nothingness? Only by a connection with the absurd, by love of absolute uselessness, loving something which does not have substance but which simulates an illusion of life. I live because the mountains do not laugh and the worms do not sing.”

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

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

Love , Life , Mountain , Motivation

“It is a difficult thing for a man to resist the natural necessity of mortal passions.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Of those whom God is slow to punish
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Nature

“There is in even the most selfish passion a large element of self-abnegation. It is startling to realize that what we call extreme self-seeking is actually self-renunciation. The miser, health addict, glory chaser and their like are not far behind the selfless in the exercise of self-sacrifice.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Source: The Ordeal of Change (1963), Ch. 5: "The Readiness to Work"

Health , Exercises , Selfishness

“If all creation rests upon a passion, it is for me also an act of love and an attempt to discover in myself an inner world.”

Constantine Andreou (1917–2007) painter and Sculptor

Femme-Femmes (1997).

Love , World

“Passion often renders the most clever man a fool, and even sometimes renders the most foolish man clever.”

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

La passion fait souvent un fou du plus habile homme, et rend souvent les plus sots habiles.
Variant translation: Passion often makes a fool of the cleverest man and often makes the most foolish men clever.
Maxim 6.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Fools

“Take any action allow’d to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In which-ever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflexion into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but ’tis the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object. So that when you pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it. Vice and virtue, therefore, may be compar’d to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

.
Part 1, Section 1
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 3: Of morals

Way , Feeling , Motivation , Nature

“You are so careful of your boy's morals, knowing how troublesome they may be, that you keep him away from the Venus of Milo only to find him in the arms of the scullery maid or someone much worse. You decide that the Hermes of Praxiteles and Wagner's Tristan are not suited for young girls; and your daughter marries somebody appallingly unlike either Hermes or Tristan solely to escape from your parental protection. You have not stifled a single passion nor averted a single danger: you have depraved the passions by starving them, and broken down all the defences which so effectively protect children brought up in freedom.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

1910s, A Treatise on Parents and Children (1910)

Children , Girl , Boy , Parent

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

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

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

Soul

“A person acquainted with the true principles of this science, who preserves his Dharma (virtue or religious merit), his Artha (worldly wealth) and his Kama (pleasure or sensual gratification), and who has regard to the customs of the people, is sure to obtain the mastery over his senses. In short, an intelligent and knowing person attending to Dharma and Artha and also to Kama, without becoming the slave of his passions, will obtain success in everything that he may do.”

Vātsyāyana Indian logician

Source: The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana: Translated from the Sanscrit. In seven parts, with preface, introduction, and concluding remarks http://books.google.com/books?id=-ElAAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA9, Kama Shastra Society of London and Benares, 1883, p.9

People , Pleasure , Intelligence , Sense

“Liberals are always frightened by diversity of opinion. They think a fair way to decide passionately contested issues is for the federal government to issue uncompromising edicts giving liberals everything they want, and then to suppress all criticism of the edicts. The fascistic order, completely supplanting all democratic processes, is then known as a victory for "choice." As the Grand Inquisitor said in The Brothers Karamazov: "They have vanquished freedom and have done so to make men happy."
That's what the Supreme Court did in Roe vs. Wade, and has repeatedly done in periodic codicils to its original edict. Just this past term, in Stenberg vs. Carhart, the court expanded the apocryphal abortion right to an all-new right to stick a fork in the head of a half-born baby. The first lunacy keeps being rewritten to give abortion enthusiasts everything they could possibly want.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2000

Men , Happiness , Way , Thinking

“The less passion there is, the better we work. The calmer we are, the better for us and the more the amount of work we can do. When we let loose our feelings, we waste so much energy, shatter our nerves, disturb our minds, and accomplish very little work.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Feeling

“I work in 144 countries. I work in Africa with equal passion, in Latin America with equal passion. I've worked in Pakistan with equal passion. So it is a global fight. But I'm proud that India is where this fight began and it began through me. Then, it spread to other countries. We are born in the land of the Mahatma where solutions are made with peace and non-violence. I've been working 100% through non-violent means. I strongly believe in the principles of peace in all my fight.”

Kailash Satyarthi (1954) Indian children's rights activist

Times of India interview (2014)

Peace , Fight , Country

“In televisionland we are all sophisticated enough now to realize that every statistic has an equal and opposite statistic somewhere in the universe. It is not a candidate's favorite statistic per se that engages us, but the assurance with which he can use it.
We are testing the candidates for self-confidence, for "Presidentiality" in statistical bombardment. It doesn't really matter if their statistics be homemade. What settles the business is the cool with which they are dropped.
And so, as the second half hour treads the decimaled path toward the third hour, we become aware of being locked in a tacit conspiracy with the candidates. We know their statistics go to nothing of importance, and they know we know, and we know they know we know.
There is total but unspoken agreement that the "debate," the arguments which are being mustered here, are of only the slightest importance.
As in some primitive ritual, we all agree — candidates and onlookers — to pretend we are involved in a debate, although the real exercise is a test of style and manners. Which of the competitors can better execute the intricate maneuvers prescribed by a largely irrelevant ritual?
This accounts for the curious lack of passion in both performers. Even when Ford accuses Carter of inconsistency, it is done in a flat, emotionless, game-playing style. The delivery has the tuneless ring of an old press release from the Republican National Committee. Just so, when Carter has an opportunity to set pulses pounding by denouncing the Nixon pardon, he dances delicately around the invitation like a maiden skirting a bog.
We judge that both men judge us to be drained of desire for passion in public life, to be looking for Presidents who are cool and noninflammable. They present themselves as passionless technocrats using an English singularly devoid of poetry, metaphor and even coherent forthright declaration.
Caught up in the conspiracy, we watch their coolness with fine technical understanding and, in the final half hour, begin asking each other for technical judgments. How well is Carter exploiting the event to improve our image of him? Is Ford's television manner sufficiently self-confident to make us sense him as "Presidential"?
It is quite extraordinary. Here we are, fully aware that we are being manipulated by image projectionists, yet happily asking ourselves how obligingly we are submitting to the manipulation. It is as though a rat running a maze were more interested in the psychologist's charts on his behavior than in getting the cheese at the goal line.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"And All of Us So Cool" (p.340)
There's a Country in My Cellar (1990)

Life , Men , Behavior , Exercises

“The anxiety to be admired is a loveless passion …, loud on the hustings, gay in the ball-room, mute and sullen at the family fireside.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Aids to Reflection, 1839 https://archive.org/stream/aidstoreflection06cole#page/142/mode/2up, p. 142.

Family

“I am growing increasingly convinced that if every one of these kids burning with passion to write that hit Christian song or make that hit Christian movie or start that hit Christian ministry to change the world would instead focus their passion on walking with God on a daily basis, the world would change.”

Phil Vischer (1966) American puppeter

Source: Me, Myself, & Bob (2006), p. 243

God , World , Change

“Desiree,
Oh, Desiree.
There I was found
By the sweet passion sound
Of your loving song.
Time was right, the night was long.Remember Desiree,
Oh, Desiree.
And though somehow I knew
I could only have you 'til the morning light,
The night was long, the time was right.”

Neil Diamond (1941) American singer-songwriter

Desiree
Song lyrics, I'm Glad You're Here with Me Tonight (1977)

Love , Light , Time , Night

“I have lived and slept in the same bed with English countesses and Prussian farm women… no woman has excited passions among women more than I have.”

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

As quoted in Parted Lips : Lesbian Love Quotes Through the Ages (2002) by Simone Rich

Women

“The danger of disturbing the public tranquillity by interesting too strongly the public passions, is a still more serious objection against a frequent reference of constitutional questions to the decision of the whole society.”

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

Federalist No. 49 (2 February 1788)
1780s, Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

Question , Decision

“Back o'er the deep I turn my longing eyes,
And chide the wayward passions that rebel:
Yet boots it not to think, or to complain,
Musing sad ditties to the reckless main.
To dreams like these, adieu! the pealing bell
Speaks of the hour that stays not—and the day
To life's sad turmoil calls my heart away.”

William Lisle Bowles (1762–1850) English priest, poet and critic

On Landing at Ostend, from The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 - With Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes by George Gilfillan (1855).

Life , Sadness , Dreams , Thinking

“Perhaps these experiences of cognitive man are lacking in the emotional dynamic and turbulent passion of aesthetic man; perhaps these experiences are devoid of flashy and externally impressive bursts of ecstasy or stychic enthusiasm. However, they are possessed of a profound depth and a clear penetrating vision. They do not flourish and then wither away like experiences that are only based on a vague, obscure moment of psychic upheaval.”

Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903–1993) American theologian

Source: Halakhic Man (1983), p. 84

“Chemists usually write about their chemical careers in terms of the different areas and the discrete projects in those areas on which they have worked. Essentially all my chemical investigations, however, are in only one area, and I tend to view my research not with respect to projects, but with respect to where I’ve been driven by two passions which I acquired in graduate school: I am passionate about the Periodic Table (and selenium, titanium and osmium are absolutely thrilling), and I am passionate about catalysis. What the ocean was to the child, the Periodic Table is to the chemist; new catalytic reactivity is, of course, my personal coelacanth.”

K. Barry Sharpless (1941) American chemist

Nobel lecture, 2001

School , Personality

“I fancy all distinctively poetical language ought to be banned and the poetry come out of the quality of the idea and the intensity or passion with which it is expressed.”

Roger Fry (1866–1934) English artist and art critic

Letter to R. C. Trevelyan , September 7, 1932
Other Quotes

Idea

“True majorities, in a TV-dominated and anti-intellectual age, may need sound bites and flashing lights—and I am not against supplying such lures if they draw children into even a transient concern with science. But every classroom has one [Oliver] Sacks, one [Eric] Korn, or one [Jonathan] Miller, usually a lonely child with a passionate curiosity about nature, and a zeal that overcomes pressures for conformity. Do not the one in fifty deserve their institutions as well—magic places, like cabinet museums, that can spark the rare flames of genius?”

Stephen Jay Gould book Dinosaur in a Haystack

"Cabinet Museums: Alive, Alive, O!", p. 246
Dinosaur in a Haystack (1995)

Children , Age , Nature , Light

“"Who drinks one bowl hath scant delight; to poorest passion he was born;
"Who drains the score must e'er expect to rue the headache of the morn."
Safely he jogs along the way which "Golden Mean" the sages call;
Who scales the brow of frowning Alp must face full many a slip and fall.”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

Way , Drink

“Mind at rest is the Temple of Joy. So long as it is gurgling with its desires, passions and attachments in its stormy surface, the signature of joy gets ruffled out.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Joy

“The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic. His opinions are determined not by his reason -- 'the bulk of mankind' says Swift 'is as well qualified for flying as for thinking' -- but by his passions; and the faintest of all human passions is the love of truth. He believes that the text of ancient authors is generally sound, not because he has acquainted himself with the elements of the problem, but because he would feel uncomfortable if he did not believe it; just as he believes, on the same cogent evidence, that he is a fine fellow, and that he will rise again from the dead.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

Introduction to Astronomicon of Manilius, Lib I. (Cambridge University Press, [1903] 1937) p. xliii.

Love , Truth , Feeling , Problem

“Many businesses in Yorkshire want the security and stability of Britain’s continued membership of the European Union, a cause I look forward to championing passionately in this place and elsewhere.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

Devolution and Growth Across Britain (19 June 2015)

Business

“After all, in the poets love has its priests, and sometimes one hears a voice which knows how to defend it; but of faith one hears never a word. Who speaks in honor of this passion? Philosophy goes further. Theology sits rouged at the window and courts its favor, offering to sell her charms to philosophy. it is supposed to be difficult to understand Hegel, but to understand Abraham is a trifle. To go beyond Hegel's is a miracle, but to get beyond Abraham is the easiest thing of all.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Problemata: Preliminary Expectoration
1840s, Fear and Trembling (1843)

Love , Faith , Understanding

“The passion for seeking the truth for truth's sake…can be kept alive only if we continue to seek the truth for truth's sake.”

Franz Boas (1858–1942) German-American anthropologist

Introduction.
Race and Democratic Society (1945)

Truth

“The essential difference with Builders is that they've found something to do that matters to them and are therefore so passionately engaged, they rise above the personality baggage that would otherwise hold them down. Whatever they are doing has so much meaning to them that the cause itself provides charisma and they plug into it as if it was electrical current.”

Jerry I. Porras (1938) American writer

Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery and Mark Thompson. Success Built to Last: Creating A Life That Matters, Wharton School Publishing, 2006. p. 110

Personality

“We're here to re-dedicate you to The Power, The Passion, The Mystery, and The Ministry of Rock and Roll.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

Guitar magazine (July 1999)

“I have known exile and a wild passion
Of longing changing to a cold ache.
King, beggar and fool, I have been all by turns,
Knowing the body’s sweetness, the mind’s treason;
Taliesin still, I show you a new world, risen,
Stubborn with beauty, out of the heart’s need.”

R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet

"Taliesin 1952"
Song at the Year's Turning (1955)

World , Beauty , Fools , Change

“Any man who concentrates his energies totally on one passion is, by definition, someone who hurts the people close to him.”

Arsène Wenger (1949) French footballer and manager

On Sir Alex Ferguson, (February 2007) http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2002390000-2007060364,00.html

People , Hurt

“I am inclined to agree with the Head Master of Eton that pæderastic passions among schoolboys 'do no harm'; further, I think them the only redeeming feature of sexual life at public schools.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

"Energized Enthusiasm : A Note On Theurgy" in The Equinox Vol. 1 no. 9 (Spring 1913).

Life , School , Thinking

“We need to love [children] and help them discover their passions. We need to encourage them to work hard and help them understand that failure is a necessary ingredient for success, as is perseverance.”

Bran Ferren (1953) American technologist

To create for the ages, let's combine art and engineering, Bran, Ferren, January 23, 2018, www.ted.com, March 2014 https://www.ted.com/talks/bran_ferren_to_create_for_the_ages_let_s_combine_art_and_engineering,

Love , Children , Failure , Understanding

“I think I may have been the first grown man in the world to fall truly, passionately, sexually, romantically and sentimentally in love. I practically invented it.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

Love , World , Thinking

“The rest of Sitka’s homicides are so-called crimes of passion, which is a shorthand way of expressing the mathematical product of alcohol and firearms.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Source: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007), Chapter 1

Alcohol , Way , Mathematics

“We were all there when Janco arrived with his masks, and everyone immediately put one on. Then something strange happened. Not only did the mask immediately call for a costume; it also demanded a quite definite, passionate gesture, bordering on madness. Although we could not have imagined it five minutes earlier we were walking around with most bizarre movements, festooned and draped with impossible objects, each one of us trying to outdo the other in inventiveness... What fascinated us all about the masks is that they represent not human characters and passions, but.... passions that are larger than life. The horror of our time [World War 1., a. o. ], the paralyzing background of events, is made visible.”

Hugo Ball (1886–1927) German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists

Ball's diary entry, 24 May 1916; as quoted in Looking at Dada, eds. Sarah Ganz Blythe & Edward D. Powers - The Museum of Modern Art New York, ISBN: 087070-705-1; p. 4
1916

Life , War , World , Imagination

“Christianity excludes malignity, subdues selfishness, regulates the passions, subordinates the appetites, quickens the intellect, exalts the affections. It promotes industry, honesty, truth, purity, kindness. It humbles the proud, exalts the lowly, upholds law, favors liberty, is essential to it, and would unite men in one great brotherhood. It is the breath of life to social and civil well-being here, and spreads the azure of that heaven into whose unfathomed depths the eye of faith loves to look.”

Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 139.

Love , Life , Men , Truth

“Plato in his allegory of the soul—in the Phaedrus—though he apparently divides the passions which draw the human chariot into two classes, the heavenward and the earthward—figured by the white horse and the black horse respectively—does not recommend that the black horse should be destroyed or dismissed, but only that he (as well as the white horse) should be kept under due control by the charioteer. By which he seems to intend that there is a power in man which stands above and behind the passions, and under whose control alone the human being can safely move. In fact if the fiercer and so-called more earthly passions were removed, half the driving force would be gone from the chariot of the human soul. Hatred may be devilish at times—but after all the true value of it depends on what you hate, on the use to which the passion is put. Anger, though inhuman at one time is magnificent and divine at another. Obstinacy may be out of place in a drawing-room, but it is the latest virtue on a battlefield when an important position has to be held against the full brunt of the enemy. And Lust, though maniacal and monstrous in its aberrations, cannot in the last resort be separated from its divine companion, Love. To let the more amiable passions have entire sway notoriously does not do: to turn your cheek, too literally, to the smiter, is (pace Tolstoy) only to encourage smiting; and when society becomes so altruistic that everybody runs to fetch the coal-scuttle we feel sure that something has gone wrong. The white-washed heroes of our biographies with their many virtues and no faults do not please us. We have an impression that the man without faults is, to say the least, a vague, uninteresting being—a picture without light and shade—and the conventional semi-pious classification of character into good and bad qualities (as if the good might be kept and the bad thrown away) seems both inadequate and false.”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

Defence of Criminals: A Criticism of Morality (1889)

Love , Hate , Feeling , Soul

“all of us know he means
we mustn't, any of us, lose touch with the source,
pretend it's not there, cover over
the mineshaft of passion”

Denise Levertov (1923–1997) Poet

Conversation in Moscow

“He was a great patriot, a great man; above all, a great American. His country was the ruling, mastering passion of his life from the beginning even unto the end.”

Henry Cabot Lodge (1850–1924) American statesman

Theodore Roosevelt, Address Before Congress (February 9, 1919).

Life , Country

“He fell in love with himself at first sight and it is a passion to which he has always remained faithful.”

Anthony Powell A Dance to the Music of Time

The Acceptance World (1955), ch. 1.
A Dance to the Music of Time (1951-1975)

Love , Faith

“Whatever is placed beyond the reach of sense and knowledge, whatever is imperfectly discerned, the fancy pieces out at its leisure; and all but the present moment, but the present spot, passion claims for its own, and brooding over it with wings outspread, stamps it with an image of itself. Passion is lord of infinite space, and distant objects please because they border on its confines and are moulded by its touch.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"Why Distant Objects Please"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Knowledge , Sense , Distant

“Tis evident, that sympathy, or the communication of passions, takes place among animals, no less than among men. Fear, anger, courage and other affections are frequently communicated from one animal to another […] And 'tis remarkable, that tho' almost all animals use in play the same member, and nearly the same action as in fighting; a lion, a tyger, a cat their paws; an ox his homs; a dog his teeth; a horse his heels: Yet they most carefully avoid harming their companion, even tho' they have nothing to fear from his resentment; which is an evident proof of the sense brutes have of each other's pain and pleasure.”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 2, Section 12
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 2: Of the passions

Men , Pain , Pleasure , Fear

“It's this accursed science," I cried. "It's the very Devil. The medieval priests and persecutors were right and the Moderns are all wrong. You tamper with it—and it offers you gifts. And directly you take them it knocks you to pieces in some unexpected way. Old passions and new weapons—now it upsets your religion, now it upsets your social ideas, now it whirls you off to desolation and misery!”

H. G. Wells book The First Men in the Moon

Source: The First Men in the Moon (1901), Ch. 13: Mr. Cavor Makes Some Suggestions

Religion , Way , Idea , Science

“All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

" Love http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Love.html", st. 1 (1799)

Love

“A burst of passion is a fine rousing thing upon occasion, Helen, and a flood of tears is marvellously affecting, but, when indulged too often, they are both deuced plaguy things for spoiling one's beauty and tiring out one's friends.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XXX : Domestic Scenes; Arthur to Helen

Beauty , Tear

“There are some who object to war because of its immorality, there are some who shrink from the arbitrament of arms because of its increased cruelty and barbarity; there are a growing number who protest against this method, at the outset known to be unsuccessful, of attempting to settle international disputes because of its imbecility and futility. But there is not a living soul in any country who does not deeply resent having his passions roused, his indignation inflamed, his patriotism exploited, and his highest ideals desecrated by concealment, subterfuge, fraud, falsehood, trickery, and deliberate lying on the part of those in whom he is taught to repose confidence and to whom he is enjoined to pay respect.”

Arthur Ponsonby (1871–1946) British Liberal and later Labour politician and pacifist

Falsehood in Wartime (1928), Introduction

War , Soul , Confidence , Lying

“To crave wealth and honor, to demand power, to pile up riches, to gather all those vanities which seem to make for pomp and empty display, that is our furious passion and our unbounded desire. On the other hand, we fear and abhor poverty, obscurity, and humility, and we seek to avoid them by all possible means.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Page 41.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

Fear , Wealth

“Interest in and patience with long, complex books and poems have alarmingly diminished not only among college students but college faculty in the US. It is difficult to imagine American students today, even at elite universities, gathering impromptu at midnight for a passionate discussion of big, challenging literary works like Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov -- a scene I witnessed in a recreation room strewn with rock albums at my college dormitory in upstate New York in 1965.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

The Magic of Images: Word and Picture in a Media Age (2004)

Books , Imagination , Universe , Patience

“Remember that every guilty compliance with the humors of the world, every sinful indulgence of our own passions, is laying up cares and fears for the hour of darkness; and that the remembrance of ill-spent time will strew our sick-bed with thorns, and rack our sinking spirits with despair.”

Reginald Heber (1783–1826) English clergyman

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 547.

World , Fear , Time , Despair

“She sat there, the white of saliva at the ends of her mouth, her teeth gritted, her hands pulling at her long hair, her face fighting off a scream, but it didn't matter; she could scream if she liked, for Arturo Bandini wasn't queer, there was nothing at all wrong with Arturo Bandini; why, he had a passion like six men, that boy, he had felt it coming to the surface: some guy, mighty writer, mighty lover; right with the world, right with his prose.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Men , World , Guy , Boy

“This book is dedicated to the people of America--strong, outspoken, intense in their convictions, sometimes wrong-headed but always generous and brave, with a passion for justice no nation has ever matched.”

Paul Johnson book A History of the American People

A History of the American People (1997).

People , Books , Justice , Strong

“If poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility, then science is tranquility recollected in emotion: a struggle to think carefully in the swirl of passionate curiosity.”

George Musser

Spooky Action at a Distance (2015), Ch. 4 : The Great Debate

Thinking , Science

“You see, I went on with this research just the way it led me. That is the only way I ever heard of true research going. I asked a question, devised some method of obtaining an answer, and got — a fresh question. Was this possible or that possible? You cannot imagine what this means to an investigator, what an intellectual passion grows upon him! You cannot imagine the strange, colourless delight of these intellectual desires!”

H. G. Wells book The Island of Doctor Moreau

Source: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), Ch. 14: Doctor Moreau Explains

Way , Imagination , Question

“This extreme air of abstraction, of empty and bland removedness, was almost terrifying. It was that kind of unconcern that humbled the ardent, the passionate of nature, and made them wonder why they were expending so much energy of body and spirit when every day but led them to the worms. Deadyawn, by temperament or lack of it, achieved unwittingly what wise men crave: equipoise.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 11 (p. 441)

Men , Nature

“Sex is excitement, seeks satisfaction and soon loses interest - selfishness. Making love is passionate, fulfilling and does not look for an end - selflessness.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

The Way In (2000)

Love , Making love , Sex , Selfishness

“Admit their maxims, and the universe returns to a frightful chaos; all things are thrown into disorder upon the earth; all the notions of virtue and vice are overthrown; the most inviolable laws of society are abolished: the discipline of morality is swept away; the government of states and empires ceases to be subject to any rule; the whole harmony of political institutions is dissolved; and the human race becomes an assemblage of madmen, barbarians, cheats, unnatural wretches who have no other laws but force, no other curb than their passions and the dread of authority, no other tie than irreligion and independence, no other gods than themselves.”

Jean Baptiste Massillon (1663–1742) French Catholic bishop and famous preacher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 348.

God , Law , Universe , Cheating

“…each individual appeared satisfied to stand alone. It seemed a sign of force; yet to stand alone is quite natural when one has no passions; still easier when one has no pains.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Pain , Nature , Appearance

“A Democratic Spirit is one that combines rigor and humility, i. e., passionate conviction plus sedulous respect for the convictions of others. As any American knows, this is a very difficult spirit to cultivate and maintain, particularly when it comes to issues you feel strongly about. Equally tough is a D. S.'s criterion of 100 percent intellectual integrity--you have to be willing to look honestly at yourself and your motives for believing what you believe, and do it more or less continually.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

"Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage." Harper's Magazine, April 2001.
Essays

Feeling , Motivation

“Then a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashion must excite your languid spleen,
An attachment à la Plato for a bashful young potato, or a not-too-French French bean!
Though the Philistines may jostle, you will rank as an apostle in the high aesthetic band,
If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your medieval hand.”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

Act I
Patience (1881)

Fashion

“Children, by nature, are keen, passionate and curious. What was referred to as laziness is often merely an awakening of sensitivity, a psychological inability to submit to certain absurd duties, and a natural result of the distorted, unbalanced education given to them. This laziness, which leads to an insuperable reluctance to learn, is, contrary to appearances, sometimes proof of intellectual superiority and a condemnation of the teacher.”

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

Children , Education , Nature , Learning

“The Left doesn't hate evil, it hates those who hate evil. On the Left there is a subliminal, subconscious deep understanding that they are inadequate to the job of fighting evil. That's why they get so passionate about trivia.”

Dennis Prager (1948) American writer, speaker, radio and TV commentator, theologian

Dennis Prager, Speaking at the 20th Anniversary Gala of the Freedom Center https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pCAhVStBIY (2 February 2008), retrieved 26 August 2015
2000s

Hate , Understanding , Evil , Fight

“The pursuit of wealth generally diverts men of great talents and strong passions from the pursuit of power; and it frequently happens that a man does not undertake to direct the fortunes of the state until he has shown himself incompetent to conduct his own.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter X-XIV, Chapter XIII.

Men , Strong , Wealth

“Now that the dogs of war are calling for the head of Senator Al Franken I believe it is time to speak up on behalf of all heterosexual males. As a candidate for Governor let me save my opponents some research time. In my last fifty years I was sexually intimate with approximately 50 very attractive females. It ranged form a gorgeous personal secretary to Senator Bob Taft (Senior) who was my first true love and we made passionate love in the hayloft of her parents barn in Gallipolis and ended with a drop dead gorgeous red head who was senior advisor to Peter Lewis at Progressive Insurance in Cleveland.
Now can we get back to discussing legalizing marijuana and opening the state hospital network to combat the opioid crisis. I am sooooo disappointed by this national feeding frenzy about sexual indiscretions decades ago.
Peace.”

Bill O'Neill (1947) Ohio judge

Facebook post, 11-17-2017 AM

Love , War , Peace , Dogs

Quotes about passion page 17

Quotes about passion
page 17