Quotes about passion
page 21

“Let us not be afraid to express the passionate concern everyone of us feels about present housing conditions. … This is a problem which brooks no escape, no evasion. It is no use talking about a free market: the provision of decent housing for all is a clear and inescapable obligation of government.”

Harold Wilson (1916–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to a Labour rally in Wembley Pool (12 September 1964), quoted in The Times (14 September 1964), p. 6
Leader of the Opposition

Feeling, Problem, Housing

“I fell indeed into a morbid state, deep and enduring, and alien to fear, which has left permanent scars upon my mind. I must confess that I lost faith in the sanity of the world when I saw it suffering the painful disorder of this island. A blind Fate, a vast pitiless Mechanism, seemed to cut and shape the fabric of existence; and I, Moreau (by his passion for research), Montgomery (by his passion for drink), the Beast People with their instincts and mental restrictions, were torn and crushed, ruthlessly, inevitably, amid the infinite complexity of its incessant wheels.”

H. G. Wells book The Island of Doctor Moreau

Source: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), Ch. 16: How the Beast Folk Tasted Blood

Pain, Fate, People, World

“Passionate servant leaders, determined to create a legacy of earthshaking transformation in their domain create/must necessarily create organizations which are … no less than Cathedrals in which the full and awesome power of the Imagination and Spirit and native Entrepreneurial flair of diverse individuals is unleashed … In passionate pursuit of jointly perceived soaring purpose and personal and community and client service Excellence.”

Tom Peters (1942) American writer on business management practices

24 December 2018
Tom Peters Daily, Weekly Quote

Imagination, Communication, Personality

“Many of the dead very considerably retard the process of dissolution by clinging passionately to the earth which they have left; they simply will not turn their thoughts and desires upward, but spend their time in struggling with all their might to keep in full touch with the physical plane, thus causing great trouble to any one who may be trying to help them. Earthly matters are the only ones in which they have had any living interest, and they cling to them with desperate tenacity even after death. Naturally as time passes on they find it increasingly difficult to keep hold of things down here, but instead of welcoming and encouraging this process of gradual refinement and spiritualization they resist it vigorously by every means in their power… thereby not only causing themselves a vast amount of entirely unnecessary pain and sorrow, but also very seriously delaying their upward progress and prolonging their stay in astral regions to an almost indefinite extent. In convincing them that this ignorant and disastrous opposition to the cosmic will is contrary to the laws of nature, and persuading them to adopt an attitude of mind which is the exact reversal of it, lies a great part of the work of those who are trying to help.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: Invisible Helpers (1915), Ch. 12

Death, Pain, Law, Nature

“The neophyte is never in greater danger of falling a victim to delusion than when he has subjected his grosser passions and begun to develop his psychic sight, hearing, and touch. He is like the newborn babe getting its first lessons of cisuterine life, grasping at the pretty silver moon, clutching at fire and lamp, miscalculating distances, tottering upon its feeble legs.”

Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907) Union United States Army officer

The Source and Value of the "Mysteries" (1888)

Life

“The source of every Crime, is some defect of the Understanding; or some error in Reasoning; or some sudden force of the Passions.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The Second Part, Chapter 27, p. 152
Leviathan (1651)

Error, Understanding

“I am aware that the age is not what we all wish. But I am sure, that the only means of checking its precipitate degeneracy, is heartily to concur with whatever is the best in our time; and to have some more correct standard of judging what that best is, than the transient and uncertain favour of a court. If once we are able to find, and can prevail on ourselves to strengthen an union of such men, whatever accidentally becomes indisposed to ill-exercised power, even by the ordinary operation of human passions, must join with that society, and cannot long be joined, without in some degree assimilating to it. Virtue will catch as well as vice by contact; and the public stock of honest manly principle will daily accumulate. We are not too nicely to scrutinize motives as long as action is irreproachable. It is enough, (and for a worthy man perhaps too much,) to deal out its infamy to convicted guilt and declared apostacy.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)

Men, Age, Exercises, Motivation

“We are co-partners in a long and rich religious history -- the Judeo-Christian traditions. Many blacks and Jews have a shared passion for social justice at home and peace abroad. We must seek a revival of the spirit, inspired by a new vision and new possibilities. We must return to higher ground. We are bound by Moses and Jesus, but also connected with Islam and Mohammed. These three great religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, were all born in the revered and holy city of Jerusalem.”

Jesse Jackson (1941) African-American civil rights activist and politician

Address to the Democratic National Convention, 1984

Peace, Religion, Justice, Home

“We must not draw general conclusions from certain particular principles, though, in the main, true ones. We must not suppose that, because a man is a rational animal, he will therefore always act rationally; or, because he has such or such a predominant passion, that he will act invariably and consequentially in the pursuit of it. No. We are complicated machines: and though we have one main-spring, that gives motion to the whole, we have an infinity of little wheels, which, in their turns, retard, precipitate, and sometimes stop that motion.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

19 December 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

Spring, Animals, Drawing

“Such men ever, whether they have some business to transact, or have taken upon them some office, or are in some critical conjuncture, put before their eyes the example of noble men, and consider what Plato would have done on the occasion, what Epaminondas would have said, how Lycurgus or Agesilaus would have dealt; that so, adjusting and re-modelling themselves, as it were, at their mirrors, they may correct any ignoble expression, and repress any ignoble passion.”

Plutarch book Moralia

Source: Moralia, How one may be aware of one's progress in virtue, XV

Men, Business

“The cruelties of property and privilege are always more ferocious than the revenges of poverty and oppression. For the one aims at perpetuating resented injustice, the other is merely a momentary passion soon appeased.”

C. L. R. James (1901–1989) Trinidadian writer

Source: The Black Jacobins (1938), pp. 88-89.

Revenge

“I wish the result had gone the other way. I campaigned passionately for that. But as democrats our party has to accept that result and it follows that the prime minister should not be blocked from starting the Article 50 negotiations.”

Keir Starmer (1962) British politician and barrister

Brexit decision 'difficult' for Labour, Keir Starmer says https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38799686 BBC News (31 January 2017) 2017

Way

“The main preparation to be made for receiving in the physical vehicle the vibrations of the higher consciousness are: its purification from grosser materials by pure food and pure life; the entire subjugation of the passions, and the cultivation of an even, balanced temper and mind, unaffected by the turmoil and vicissitudes of external life; the habit of quiet meditation on lofty topics, turning the mind away from the objects of the senses, and from the mental images arising from them, and fixing it on higher things; the cessation of hurry, especially of that restless, excitable hurry of the mind, which keeps the brain continually at work and flying from one subject to another; the genuine love for the things of the higher world, that makes them more attractive than the objects of the lower, so that the mind rests contentedly in their companionship as in that of a well-loved friend.”

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

The Ageless Wisdom (1897)

Love, Life, World, Making love

“Turkey is a secular and democratic state. This is all the more reason to make Turkey feel welcome in Europe… This is something I feel very strongly and very passionately about. Together I want us to pave the road from Ankara to Brussels.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"Turkey must be welcome in EU, insists Cameron" http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkey-must-be-welcome-in-eu-insists-cameron-2036190.html, The Independent, (27th July 2010) 2010s, A speech about Turkey's EU membership process

Making love, Feeling

“Christ’s death on the Cross should live in our thoughts and imagination, for frequent thought on the Passion of Christ keeps aflame and brings to intense heat the fires of earnest piety.”

Bonaventure (1221–1274) franciscan, bishop, cardinal, Doctor of the Church, catholic saint

Holiness of Life

Death, Imagination, Christ

“The child’s desire to have distinctions made in his ideas grew stronger every day. Having learned that things had names, he wished to hear the name of every thing supposing that there could be nothing which his father did not know. He often teased him with his questions, and caused him to inquire concerning objects which, but for this, he would have passed without notice. Our innate tendency to pry into the origin and end of things was likewise soon developed in the boy. When he asked whence came the wind, and whither went the flame, his father for the first time truly felt the limitation of his own powers, and wished to understand how far man may venture with his thoughts, and what things he may hope ever to give account of to himself or others. The anger of the child, when he saw injustice done to any living thing, was extremely grateful to the father, as the symptom of a generous heart. Felix once struck fiercely at the cook for cutting up some pigeons. The fine impression this produced on Wilhelm was, indeed, erelong disturbed, when he found the boy unmercifully tearing sparrows in pieces and beating frogs to death. This trait reminded him of many men, who appear so scrupulously just when without passion, and witnessing the proceedings of other men. The pleasant feeling, that the boy was producing so fine and wholesome an influence on his being, was, in a short time, troubled for a moment, when our friend observed, that in truth the boy was educating him more than he the boy.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Book VIII – Chapter 1
Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre (Journeyman Years) (1821–1829)

Death, Men, Truth, Education

“We assert then that nothing has been accomplished without interest on the part of the actors; and — if interest be called passion, inasmuch as the whole individuality, to the neglect of all other actual or possible interests and claims, is devoted to an object with every fibre of volition, concentrating all its desires and powers upon it — we may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Lectures on the Philosophy of History

Often abbreviated to: Nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion.
Variant translation: We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without enthusiasm.
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Volume 1

World, Parting

“The anti‐Semite understands nothing about modern society. He would be incapable of conceiving of a constructive plan; his action cannot reach the level of the methodical; it remains on the ground of passion. To a long‐term enterprise he prefers an explosion of rage analogous to the running amuck of the Malays. His intellectual activity is confined to interpretation; he seeks in historical events the signs of the presence of an evil power. Out of this spring those childish and elaborate fabrications which give him his resemblance to the extreme paranoiacs. In addition, anti‐Semitism channels evolutionary drives toward the destruction of certain men, not of institutions. An anti‐Semitic mob will consider it has done enough when it has massacred some Jews and burned a few synagogues. It represents, therefore, a safety valve for the owning classes, who encourage it and thus substitute for a dangerous hate against their regime a beneficent hate against particular people. Above all this naive dualism is eminently reassuring to he anti‐Semite himself. If all he has to do is to remove Evil, that means that the Good is already given.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Anti-Semite and Jew

He has no need to seek it in anguish, to invent it, to scrutinize it patiently when he has found it, to prove it in action, to verify it by its consequences, or, finally, to shoulder he responsibilities of the moral choice be has made. It is not by chance that the great outbursts of anti‐Semitic rage conceal a basic optimism. The anti‐Semite as cast his lot for Evil so as not to have to cast his lot for Good. The more one is absorbed in fighting Evil, the less one is tempted to place the Good in question. One does not need to talk about it, yet it is always understood in the discourse of the anti‐Semite and it remains understood in his thought. When he has fulfilled his mission as holy destroyer, the Lost Paradise will reconstitute itself. For the moment so many tasks confront the anti‐Semite that he does not have time to think about it. He is in the breach, fighting, and each of his outbursts of rage is a pretext to avoid the anguished search for the Good.
Pages 31-32
Anti-Semite and Jew (1945)

Men, Hate, People, Spring

“I also believe that Spinoza, like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, on whose lives and philosophy I have based two earlier novels, wrote much that is highly relevant to my field of psychiatry and psychotherapy—for example, that ideas, thoughts, and feelings are caused by previous experiences, that passions may be studied dispassionately, that understanding leads to transcendence—and I wished to celebrate his contributions through a novel of ideas.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Irvin D. Yalom, in his novel The Spinoza Problem, prologue. (New York: Basic Books, 2012)
S - Z

Feeling, Idea, Understanding, Study

“It is also a very curious thing. Why should a 17th-century Portuguese-Jewish philosopher whose dense and opaque writings are notoriously difficult to understand incite such passionate devotion, even obsession, among a lay audience in the 21st century? Part of the answer is the drama and mystery at the centre of his life: why exactly was Spinoza so harshly punished by the community that raised and nurtured him? Just as significant, I suspect, is that everyone loves an iconoclast – especially a radical and fearless one that suffered persecution in his lifetime for ideas and values that are still so important to us today. Spinoza is a model of intellectual courage. Like a prophet, he took on the powers-that-be with an unflinching honesty that revealed ugly truths about his fellow citizens and their society.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Steven Nadler, in his article Why Spinoza still matters https://aeon.co/essays/at-a-time-of-zealotry-spinoza-matters-more-than-ever (Aeon.co, 28 April 2016) M - R, Steven Nadler

Love, Life, Truth, Making love

“The philosophy of a purely theoretical thinker, who contemplates all things from the point of view of things in themselves, belongs in the same class as the attempt to apply abstract thought to the entire field of consciousness without meeting any byways or stops. Look at Baruch Spinoza, that true hero of thought, who studied in his own person the way in which the emotions and passions, as expressions of his internal mechanism, transform themselves for him into objects of geometrical analysis! In the meantime, until the heroism of Baruch Spinoza shall become the matter-of-fact virtue of everyday life in the higher developed humanity of the future, and until myths, poetry, metaphysics and religion shall no longer overshadow the field of consciousness, let us be content that up to now, and for the present, philosophy in its differentiated and its improved sense has served, and serves, as a critical instrument and helps science to keep its formal methods and logical processes clear; that it helps us in our lives to reduce the obstacles, which the fantastic projections of the emotions, passions, fears and hopes pile in the way of free thought; that it helps and serves, as Spinoza himself would say, to vanquish imaginationem et ignorantiam.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Antonio Labriola, Socialism and Philosophy (1897) [original in Italian]
G - L

Life, Fear, Religion, Hope

“For years my mind was divided between Hegel and Spinoza. With youthful ingenuity I defended the dialectics of the former against Zeller, the founder of neo-Kantianism. The writings of Spinoza I knew by heart, and with loving understanding I gave expositions of his theory of affections and passions.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Antonio Labriola, Socialism and Philosophy (1897) [original in Italian]
G - L

Love, Youth, Making love, Understanding

“The piety of philosophers is theory, pure intuition of the divinity, calm and gay in silent solitude. Spinoza is the ideal of the species. The religious state of the poet is more passionate and more communicative.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Friedrich Schlegel, Philosophical Fragments (1798)
S - Z

Communication, Solitude

“He was passionate and thought he was wise; I was a fool and suspected it; I was nearer to wisdom.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

Il était passionné et se croyait sage; j'étais folle, mais je m'en doutais, et, sous ce point de vue, j'étais plus près que lui de la Sagesse.
Maximes et Pensées, #562
Maxims and Considerations

Wisdom, Fools

“My whole life is woven of threads which are in blatant contrast to my principles. … I love self-chosen poverty, and live among rich people; I avoid all honours, and yet some have come to me. … I believe that illusions are necessary to man, yet live without illusion; I believe that the passions are more profitable than reason, and yet no longer know what passion is.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

Ma vie entière est un tissu de contrastes apparents avec mes principes. Je n'aime point les Princes, et je suis attaché à une Princesse et à un Prince. On me connaît des maximes républicaines, et plusieurs de mes amis sont revêtus de décorations monarchiques. J'aime la pauvreté volontaire, et je vis avec des gens riches. Je fuis les honneurs, et quelques-uns sont venus à moi. Les lettres sont presque ma seule consolation, et je ne vois point de beaux esprits, et ne vais point à l'Académie. Ajoutez que je crois les illusions nécessaires à l'homme, et je vis sans illusion; que je crois les passions plus utiles que la raison, et je ne sais plus ce que c'est que les passions, etc.
Maximes et Pensées, #335
Maxims and Considerations, #335

Love, Life, People, Making love

“It is the destiny of our race to become united into one great body, thoroughly connected in all its parts, and possessed of similar culture. Nature, and even the passions and vices of Man, have from the beginning tended towards this end. A great part of the way towards it is already passed, and we may surely calculate that it will in time be reached.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 88
The Vocation of Man (1800), Faith

Way, Nature, Time, Parting

“And then India; let me tell you my relationship with India. Because of cricket, which is followed with great passion in the subcontinent, I have great friends in India. I’ve always loved going to India. So my first move was to reach out to Modi and I said let’s work our differences, leave our past behind and our main priority should be our people as we have similar problems; poverty and climate change. Highest number of people reside in subcontinent. On zero response from India; we thought we should wait till the Indian elections since BJP is a nationalist party. Meanwhile, a Kashmiri boy radicalized by Indian forces blew himself up on an Indian convoy. Immediately India blamed Pakistan. I told India to give us any proof and we’d act. We had actual proofs of Indian intervention in some terrorist attacks in our Balochistan province. We even caught their spy Kulbhushan Yadav who admitted to crimes. Instead of sharing proofs of any Pakistani’s alleged involvement in Pulwama attack, they tried to bomb us. We retaliated. We captured their pilot; but returned him the next day because we did not want the situation to escalate.”

Imran Khan (1952) Prime Minister of Pakistan

Speech at the United Nations General Assembly, 2019

Love, People, Making love, Boy

“Whatever her sorrow had once been, for nearly a century she had ceased to weep, and, my sudden passion spent, my own tears dried away. I had loved her very dearly in my other life, but it was a hundred years ago! I do not know but some may find in this confession evidence of lack of feeling, but I think, perhaps, that none can have had an experience sufficiently like mine to enable them to judge me.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25439 (1888), Ch. 20

Love, Life, Making love, Feeling

“As character comprises the entire sphere of the educated will, so temperament is nothing else than the sum of our natural inclinations and tendencies. Inclination is the material of the will, developing itself when controlled, into character, and when controlling, into passions. Temperament is, therefore, the root of our passions; and the latter, like the former, may be distinguished into two principal classes. Intelligent psychologists and physicians have always recognised this fact…”

Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben (1806–1849) Austrian psychiatrist, poet and philosopher

Source: The Dietetics of the Soul; Or, True Mental Discipline (1838), p. 85 1852 tr

Education, Intelligence, Nature

“Henson was, by all accounts, a bit of a saint. Read any biography of the man, and you will walk away almost suspicious of his overwhelming decency and personal integration, his unfailing optimism and boundless energy. What made the biggest impression on those around him was apparently not his astounding creativity, but the passionate and compassionate way he lived his life.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

About, "The Gospel According to Jim Henson" by David Zahl

Life, Way, Optimism, Reading

“Anu Garg triggers the kind of passionate reaction that actors, authors and memoirists would die for.”

Anu Garg (1967) Indian author

Kevin
Johnson
USA Today
2003-01-01
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-01-02-email-book_x.htm
He spread the words, one e-mail at a time

“He was perfect Muslim as envisioned by Iqbal. He possessed the inherent passion for which the Arabs are known and the delicate temperament for which the Persians are acclaimed. He was soft in private audience and action-packed when involved in some task. He was like a drew drop which smoothens the fire in the heart of tulip and like a storm which terrifies the heart of the sea. He was like that hermit whose humbleness bears magic character. He knew how to keep the lamp glowing in the tempest. He was a model of culture and refinement.”

Zakir Hussain (politician) (1897–1969) 3rd President of India

Z̤iāʼulḥasan Fārūq in: p. 1-2.
About Zakir Hussain, Quest for Truth (1999)

Heart, Perfection, Sea

“Braid passionately emphasised the scientific approach to hypnotherapy. He based his own method upon well-established or common sense principles such as the effect of expectation and vivid imagination, the role of social imitation, and the power of focused attention to increase the effect of certain dominant ideas. These are also emphasised in the modern cognitive-behavioural theory of hypnosis. Braid’s down-to-earth approach therefore provides an ideal foundation for modern scientific study of hypnosis and practical hypnotherapy.”

James Braid (1795–1860) Scottish surgeon, hypnotist, and hypnotherapist

Donald Robertson, in "The Discovery of Hypnosis: The Collected Writings of James Braid" quoted in “The Original Philosophy of Hypnotism”.

Imagination, Idea, Sense, Study

“It has been more than three decades but Hema Malini’s passion for dance has not diminished. Starting in the early 70s with solo Bhratanatyam performances, the diva has reinvented herself at every stage of her career. When she felt that the pure classical dance form would not be appreciated by a less aware audience, she expanded her art form to include ballets.”

Hema Malini (1948) Indian actress, dancer and politician

Writer Bhawana Somaaya in [Bhawana Somaaya, Fragmented Frames: Reflections of a Critic, http://books.google.com/books?id=HQ3Yi9VPU8QC&pg=PP201, 1 January 2008, Pustak Mahal, 978-81-223-1016-0, 201–]

Art, Dance

“With…passionate devotion to the ideals of beauty, harmony, freedom, and aspiration… had the strongest impact on society.”

Tyagaraja (1767–1847) Carnatic musician and composer

Dr Radhakrishnan in “Sri Thyagaraja’s life and work have moved multitudes in South India to spiritual ecstasy and noble living", page=169

Beauty, Freedom

“Sarojini Naidu writes instant poetry where images and metaphors come rolling ready on the hot plates of imagination. Her poetry is intensely emotionally, at times passionate to the point of eroticism and always has a spring.”

Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949) Indian politician, governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh from 1947 to 1949

View by H.R. Prasad quoted in [Critical Response To Indian Poetry In English, http://books.google.com/books?id=4NcHdrqUJpYC&pg=PA11, 1 January 2008, Sarup & Sons, 978-81-7625-825-8, 11–]

Imagination, Spring, Time

“Why is it that Johnny Spaghetti Stain in fucking Georgia can knock a woman up, legally be married to her, and then beat the shit out of her, but these two intelligent, sophisticated writers who have been together for 20 years can’t get married? It’s infuriating and idiotic. I’m incredibly passionate about my support for the gay community and what they’re dealing with at this current point in time. I have arguments with people where I get red in the face, screaming at the top of my lungs.”

Seth MacFarlane (1973) American animator, actor, singer and television producer

Read Oscar Host Seth MacFarlane's One and Only Gay Interview (From 2008) http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/television/2008/01/25/read-oscar-host-seth-macfarlanes-one-and-only-gay-interview, The Advocate, 25 January 2008.

People, Intelligence, Communication, Support

“I have so much respect of his talent, his passion, the strength of his voice.”

Alejandro Fernández (1971) Mexican singer

Christina Aguilera http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUkPfEc-8Ls

“His love of creating, the joy he took in it whether it was drama or comedy or his music, was inspiring to grow up around. The spirit he created on the set of The Andy Griffith Show was joyful and professional all at once. It was an amazing environment. And I think it was a reflection of the way he felt about having the opportunity to create something that people could enjoy. It was always with respect and passion for the opportunity and really what it could offer people in a very unpretentious and earthy way. He felt he was always working in service of an audience he really respected and cared about. He was a great influence on me. His passing is sad. But he lived a great rich life.”

Andy Griffith (1926–2012) American actor, television producer, Southern-gospel singer, and writer

Ron Howard, Nikki Finke, Editor in Chief. "EXCLUSIVE: Ron Howard On Andy Griffith". Deadline.com. Retrieved 2014-04-16.

Love, Life, People, Sadness

“Rajnikanth’s dedication, compassion for the welfare of co-artistes and passion for cinema have been key factors for his success as a mass-entertainer.”

Rajinikanth (1950) Indian actor

Sankar Narayan alias ‘Cable’ Sankar, an Assistant Director and a writer on film industry trends
Decoding Rajinikanth

Success

“All art is probably erotic in its ultimate character, but painting more than anything else is a purely nervous erotic activity… The eroticism of Caravaggio is special because it exists in that area between the simple sensual appreciation of the object which produces the desire to posses it, and the passionate but detached concern of the Observer, which also seeks to posses but to posses through understanding.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

Some Notes on Caravaggio (1956)

Art, Understanding, Painting

“That great lawyer was much heated in the controversy between the Courts at Westminster and the Ecclesiastical Courts. In every part of his conduct his passions influenced his judgment. Vir acer et vehemens.”

Edward Coke (1552–1634) English lawyer and judge

His law was continually warped by the different situations in which he found himself.
Heath, J., Jefferson v. Bishop of Durham (1797), 2 Bos. & Pull. 131.
About, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904)

Parting

“But if we look a little deeper we shall find there is a pathetic, one might almost say a tragic, side to the picture. A shy man means a lonely man—a man cut off from all companionship, all sociability. He moves about the world, but does not mix with it. Between him and his fellow-men there runs ever an impassable barrier—a strong, invisible wall that, trying in vain to scale, he but bruises himself against. He sees the pleasant faces and hears the pleasant voices on the other side, but he cannot stretch his hand across to grasp another hand. He stands watching the merry groups, and he longs to speak and to claim kindred with them. But they pass him by, chatting gayly to one another, and he cannot stay them. He tries to reach them, but his prison walls move with him and hem him in on every side. In the busy street, in the crowded room, in the grind of work, in the whirl of pleasure, amid the many or amid the few—wherever men congregate together, wherever the music of human speech is heard and human thought is flashed from human eyes, there, shunned and solitary, the shy man, like a leper, stands apart. His soul is full of love and longing, but the world knows it not. The iron mask of shyness is riveted before his face, and the man beneath is never seen. Genial words and hearty greetings are ever rising to his lips, but they die away in unheard whispers behind the steel clamps. His heart aches for the weary brother, but his sympathy is dumb. Contempt and indignation against wrong choke up his throat, and finding no safety-valve whence in passionate utterance they may burst forth, they only turn in again and harm him. All the hate and scorn and love of a deep nature such as the shy man is ever cursed by fester and corrupt within, instead of spending themselves abroad, and sour him into a misanthrope and cynic.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Love, Men, Hate, Pleasure

“I love Titanic because the love in the movie was pure, real, passionate and unconditional… the way the love story culminated in catastrophe was phenomenal. I love DDLJ and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai for being so over the top and yet so believable for us youngsters… I love Black for being such a sublime love story between and a teacher and his student. It was a love much beyond the ordinary.”

Rani Mukerji (1978) Indian film actress

[And my heart goes to..., http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060217/asp/etc/story_5840755.asp, 2009-04-29, telegraphindia.com]
The Actress' Take On Films

Love, Making love, Way, Teachers

“I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne. What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.”

Karl Rove (1950) American political consultant and policy advisor

Remarks of Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama Against Going to War with Iraq (2 October 2002); referencing the positions of former Pentagon policy adviser Richard Perle, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and chief Bush political adviser Karl Rove.

War

“The conservative has little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of passions. These are the wreckers of outworn empires.”

J. B. S. Haldane (1892–1964) Geneticist and evolutionary biologist

Daedalus or Science and the Future (1923)

Fear

“I have signifying of Three manners of Cheer of our Lord. The first is Cheer of Passion, as He shewed while He was here in this life, dying. Though this Beholding be mournful and troubled, yet it is glad and joyous: for He is God.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The second manner of Cheer is Ruth and Compassion: and this sheweth He, with sureness of Keeping, to all His lovers that betake them to His mercy. The third is the Blissful Cheer, as it shall be without end: and this was oftenest and longest-continued.
The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 71

Life, God

“When I was.... in the surroundings of pictures and things of art... I then had a violent passion for them... And I do not repent it, for even now, far from that land, I am often homesick for the land of pictures.”

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

Now for more than five years already, I do not know exactly how long, I'm more or less without employment, wandering here and there.. .But you will ask what is your definite aim? That aim becomes more definite, will stand out slowly and surely, as the rough draft becomes a sketch and the sketch becomes a picture.. .. my only anxiety is: how can I be of use in the world, cannot I serve some purpose and be of any good, how can I learn more and study profoundly certain subjects? In his letter to brother Theo, from Cuesmes, Belgium July 1880; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 133) p. 19 1880s, 1880

Art

“Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.”

E.M. Forster book Howards End

Source: Howards End (1910), Ch. 22

Love, Life, Making love

“A wild impetuous whirlwind of passion and faculty slumbered quiet there; such heavenly melody dwelling in the heart of it. A noble rough genuineness; homely, rustic, honest; true simplicity of strength; with its lightning-fire, with its soft dewy pity;—like the old Norse Thor, the Peasant-god!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Man of Letters

God, Home, Heart

“This is no day for the rabble-rouser, whether he be Negro or white.We must realize that we are grappling with the most weighty social problem of this nation, and in grappling with such a complex problem there is no place for misguided emotionalism. We must work passionately and unrelentingly for the goal of freedom, but we must be sure that our hands are clean in the struggle. We must never struggle with falsehood, hate, or malice. We must never become bitter. I know how we feel sometime. There is the danger that those of us who have been forced so long to stand amid the tragic midnight of oppression — those of us who have been trampled over, those of us who have been kicked about — there is the danger that we will become bitter. But if we will become bitter and indulge in hate campaigns, the new order which is emerging will be nothing but a duplication of the old order.”

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

1950s, Give Us the Ballot (1957)

Hate, Feeling, Problem, Freedom

“Ever since I arrived to a state of manhood, I have felt a sincere passion for liberty. The history of nations doomed to perpetual slavery, in consequence of yielding up to tyrants their natural born liberties, I read with a sort of philosophical horror; so that the first systematical and bloody attempt at Lexington, to enslave America, thoroughly electrified my mind, and fully determined me to take part with my country.”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

As quoted in "In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!" - American Heritage magazine Vol. 14, Issue 6 (October 1963)

History, Nature, Reading, Parting

“Middle age begins with marriage; for then work and responsibility replace carefree play, passion surrenders to the limitations of social order, and poetry yields to prose.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Source: Fallen Leaves (2014), Ch. 3 : On Middle Age

Marriage, Age

“Always fatuity, vulgarity, as soon as human passion is touched. […] Just as some poetry is of the eye (form, colour) and some of the ear, so Keats is of the palate. Not only has he constant reference to its pleasures, but the general sensation after reading him is one of tasting. 'What's the harm?”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Well, taste for some reason or the other can't carry one far into the world of beauty—that reason being perhaps that though you don't want comradership there you do want the possibility of comradership, and A cannot swallow B's mouthful by any possibility:....and this exclusiveness (to maunder on) also attaches to the physical side of sex though not the least to the spiritual.
Letter 162, to Malcolm Darling, 1 December 1916
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

Pleasure, Reading

“I still have the passion in my heart. If I don’t sing, my heart doesn’t beat so strong...”

Julio Iglesias (1943) Spanish recording artist; singer-songwriter

On singing in "Julio Iglesias says 50-year singing career is 'a miracle'" https://www.reuters.com/article/us-people-julio-iglesias/julio-iglesias-says-50-year-singing-career-is-a-miracle-idUSKCN1T60WU in Reuters (2019 Jun 5)

Strong, Singing, Heart

“What lies behind the complaint about the dearth of civil courage? In recent years we have seen a great deal of bravery and self-sacrifice, but civil courage hardly anywhere, even among ourselves. To attribute this simply to personal cowardice would be too facile a psychology; its background is quite different. In a long history, we Germans have had to learn the need for and the strength of obedience. In the subordination of all personal wishes and ideas to the tasks to which we have been called, we have seen the meaning and greatness of our lives. We have looked upwards, not in servile fear, but in free trust, seeing in our tasks a call, and in our call a vocation. This readiness to follow a command from "above" rather than our own private opinions and wishes was a sign of legitimate self-distrust. Who would deny that in obedience, in their task and calling, the Germans have again and again shown the utmost bravery and self-sacrifice? But the German has kept his freedom — and what nation has talked more passionately of freedom than the Germans, from Luther to the idealist philosophers?”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

by seeking deliverance from self-will through service to the community. Calling and freedom were to him two sides of the same thing. But in this he misjudged the world; he did not realize that his submissiveness and self-sacrifice could be exploited for evil ends. When that happened, the exercise of the calling itself became questionable, and all the moral principles of the German were bound to totter. The fact could not be escaped that the Germans still lacked something fundamental: he could not see the need for free and responsible action, even in opposition to the task and his calling; in its place there appeared on the one hand an irresponsible lack of scruple, and on the other a self-tormenting punctiliousness that never led to action. Civil courage, in fact, can grow only out of the free responsibility of free men. Only now are the Germans beginning to discover the meaning of free responsibility. It depends on a God who demands responsible action in a bold venture of faith, and who promises forgiveness and consolation to the man who becomes a sinner in that venture.
Source: Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), Civil Courage, p. 5

Fear, History, Idea, Courage

“Pride is not a wise counselor. People who believe themselves to be the incarnation of good have a distorted view of the world. The absence of any obstacle to the deployment of strength is dangerous for the strong themselves: passion takes precedence over reason. "No power without limit can be legitimate," as Montesquieu wrote long ago. Political wisdom does not consist in seeking only immediate victory, nor does it require systematic preference of "us" over "them."”

Tzvetan Todorov (1939–2017) Bulgarian historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist

Preface to the English edition (October 2002), p. xxi
Hope and Memory: Reflections on the Twentieth Century (2003)

Wisdom, People, World, Strong

“I'm a passionate moderate.”

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

1990s

“We may not stop until we have done our part to fashion a world in which there shall be some share of fellowship; which shall be better than a den of thieves. Let us not disguise the difficulties; and, above all, let us not content ourselves with nobel aspirations, counsels of perfection, and self-righteous advice to others. We shall need the wisdom of the serpent; we shall have to be content with short steps; we shall be obliged to give and take; we shall face the strongest passions of mankind — our own not the least; and in the end we shall have fabricated an imperfect instrument. But we shall not wholly have failed; we shall have gone forward, if we bring to our task a pure and chastened spirit, patience, understanding, sympathy, forbearance, generosity, fortitude, and, above all, an inflexible determination. The history of man has just begun; in the aeons which lie before him lie limitless hope or limitless despair. The choice is his; the present choice is ours. It is worth the trial.”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

"A Pledge of Allegiance" - speech for "I Am an American Day" Central Park, New York, New York. (20 May 1945) Hand credited H. G. Wells with inspiring some of the ideas expressed in this speech.
Extra-judicial writings

Wisdom, Lie, World, Hope

“After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What's not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.”

T.S. Eliot book Poems

"Gerontion"
Poems (1920)

Fear, History, Forgiveness, Courage

“The passion of Christ is the victory of divine love over the powers of evil, and therefore it is the only supportable basis for Christian obedience. Once again, Jesus calls those who follow him to share his passion. How can we convince the world by our preaching of the passion when we shrink from that passion in our own lives? On the cross Jesus fulfilled the law he himself established and thus graciously keeps his disciples in the fellowship of his suffering.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Discipleship (1937), Revenge, p. 142

Love, World, Making love, Law

“Real sexiness is about confidence, intelligence, mystery, art and passion.”

Kate Nash (1987) English pop singer and actor

Source: The Independent, Kate, Nash, Kate Nash: 'Real sexiness is about art, mystery and intelligence', 29 October 2010 https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/kate-nash-real-sexiness-is-about-art-mystery-and-intelligence-2119279.html,

Art, Confidence, Intelligence, Self-confidence

“I have 5,000 books in my home, 1,000 of which I feel are close to my heart. They have always shown me the way. Books are my great passion; I could not live without them.”

Brunello Cucinelli (1953) Italian entrepreneur and philanthropist

Source: A Day In the Life of Brunello Cucinelli https://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/designers/a17874/brunello-cucinelli-profile/ Harper's Bazaar, Lauren McCarthy, 15 September 2016

Books, Way, Feeling, Home

“Passion and prejudice govern the world; only under the name of reason. It is our part, by religion and reason joined, to counteract them all we can.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Letter to John Benson (5 October 1770); published in Wesley's Select Letters (1837), p. 207
1770s

World, Religion, Parting

“I do like social medias because of the instant feedback and interaction. I try to keep fans up to date with what I’m doing and try to show them who I am and what I’m passionate about. I also follow a lot of artists myself because I like learning more about the people I respect.”

MacKenzie Porter (1990) Canadian actress, singer and musician

Boots & Hearts 2013 Exclusive Q&A: Mackenzie Porter https://www.thereviewsarein.com/2013/08/04/boots-hearts-2013-exclusive-qa-mackenzie-porter/ (August 4, 2013)

People, Learning

“A combination of a desire to communicate, and a passionate belief in the power of story to build up relationships, to shape us. People-watching. But also being aware of situations that are currently preoccupying people. Codes of conduct change, but what the human heart wants really doesn’t.”

Joanna Trollope (1943) British writer

On what stirs her to write in “Interview with Joanna Trollope” https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/writers/advice/41/a-writers-toolkit/interviews-with-authors/interview-with-joanna-trollope in Writers & Artists

People, Communication, Change, Heart

“History, as Treitschke contends, is first of all the presentation of res gestae, and of active statesmen. The essential things in the statesman are strength of will, courage, massive ambition, passionate joy in the result. It needs no wizard to see how such doctrine as this lends a hand to the sinister school of political historians, who insist that the event is its own justification; that Force and Right are one.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

‘Politics and History’, Address as Chancellor of the University of Manchester (summer 1912), quoted in The Works of Lord Morley: Volume IV (1921), p. 33
1910s

School, History, Courage, Joy

“I have a passion for reform, for the progress of man and society. I cannot stand the feeling of being useless.”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

L'Unité d'un Homme (November 1994), quoted in The Times (21 November 1994), p. 11
President of the European Commission

Feeling

“… In a way, the author is a writer's public persona. The writer, however, is a private person. Anyone who expresses life's experiences--their own or someone else's--in writing is a creative writer, and for him or her, the most important concern, the passion, is the writing itself…”

Lucha Corpi (1945)

On how she defines “author” in “Interview with Mystery Author Lucha Corpi” http://latinola.com/story.php?story=8074 in ¡Latino LA! (2009 Dec 4)

Life, Way, Personality

“Fish, eggs, meat, salt, chillies, and asafoetida are Rajasic food-stuffs; they excite passion and make the mind restless, unsteady, and uncontrollable.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

Making love, Food, Fish

“Emotional intelligence is the foundation of leadership. It balances flexibility with toughness, vision with passion, compassion with justice.”

Amit Ray (1960) Indian author

Mindfulness Meditation for Corporate Leadership and Management (2017)

Justice, Intelligence

“Turn where we may,—within,—around,—the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve. Now, therefore, while every thing at home and abroad forebodes ruin to those who persist in a hopeless struggle against the spirit of the age,—now, while the crash of the proudest throne of the continent is still resounding in our ears,—now, while the roof of a British palace affords an ignominious shelter to the exiled heir of forty kings,—now, while we see on every side ancient institutions subverted, and great societies dissolved,—now, while the heart of England is still sound,—now, while the old feelings and the old associations retain a power and a charm which may too soon pass away,—now, in this your accepted time,—now in this your day of salvation,—take counsel, not of prejudice,—not of party spirit,—not of the ignominious pride of a fatal consistency,—but of history,—of reason,—of the ages which are past,—of the signs of this most portentous time. Pronounce in a manner worthy of the expectation with which this great Debate has been anticipated, and of the long remembrance which it will leave behind. Renew the youth of the State. Save property divided against itself. Save the multitude, endangered by their own ungovernable passions. Save the aristocracy, endangered by its own unpopular power. Save the greatest, and fairest, and most highly civilized community that ever existed, from calamities which may in a few days sweep away all the rich heritage of many ages of wisdom and glory. The danger is terrible. The time is short. If this Bill should be rejected, I pray to God that none of those who concur in rejecting it may ever remember their votes with unavailing regret, amidst the wreck of laws, the confusion of ranks, the spoliation of property, and the dissolution of social order.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Speech in the House of Commons (2 March 1831) https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1831/mar/02/ministerial-plan-of-parliamentary-reform#column_1204 in favour of the Reform Bill 1830s

Wisdom, God, Youth, Age

“Love is a fire that burns unseen,
A wound that aches yet isn't felt,
An always discontent contentment,
A pain that rages without hurting,A longing for nothing but to long,
A loneliness in the midst of people,
A never feeling pleased when pleased,
A passion that gains when lost in thought.It's being enslaved of your own free will;
It's counting your defeat a victory;
It's staying loyal to your killer.But if it's so self-contradictory,
How can Love, when Love chooses,
Bring human hearts into sympathy?”

Luís de Camões book Rhythmas de Lvis de Camoes

Rimas, Sonnet 81 (as translated by Richard Zenith) Listen to the poem in Portuguese https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ToldDy8izc&feature=youtu.be&t=33s Lyric poetry, Não pode tirar-me as esperanças, Amor é fogo que arde sem se ver Original: (pt) Amor é um fogo qu'arde sem se ver, É ferida que dói, e não se sente, É um contentamento descontente, É dor que desatina sem doer.É um não querer mais que bem querer, É um andar solitário entre a gente, É nunca contentar-se de contente, É um cuidar que ganha em se perder.É querer estar preso por vontade, É servir a quem vence o vencedor É ter com quem nos mata lealdade.Mas como causar pode seu favor Nos corações humanos amizade, Se tão contrário a si é o mesmo Amor?

Love, Pain, People, Making love

“The mothers of all ages are those who have suffered because others suffered; for each of them, self is less sensitive than the sense of her child. Self is not locked up in the maternal heart, there to be cherished, as it is by the egoist, or to be crushed and silenced, as it is by the Saint. In the mother, self is not lost, but loses all its evil by the passionate personal love that distributes it among sons and daughters. Perfect self-less love would perhaps be distributed through the multitude, but a mother is not perfect: nature has so much use for her—separate, family use—that she cannot let her go free from irrational, indispensable partialities and limitings, even injustices, all serving the turn of the race.”

Alice Meynell (1847–1922) English publisher, editor, writer, poet, activist

Source: Mary, the Mother of Jesus: An Essay (1912), Ch. IV. "The Mother", p. 40

Love, Age, Making love, Family

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”

movie Dead Poets Society

1989

Love, Life, Making love, Law

“Strong passions mean weak will, and he
Who truly knows the strength and bliss
Which are in love, will own with me
No passion but a virtue 'tis.”

Coventry Patmore (1823–1896) English poet

Book I, Canto III, II Love a Virtue.
The Angel In The House (1854)

Love, Making love, Strong

“I think we should be snorkeling and swimming on reefs. Because I think people only develop a passion for protecting things if they know what is at risk. I would hardly be one to say that we shouldn’t go near them. That said, its important to manage tourism properly. If you have a lot of people going onto reefs, stepping on reefs, collecting things from reefs, breaking corals off, or throwing anchors on top of reefs, that’s not good. It’s important to properly manage the numbers of people and their behavior when they’re in water. It’s also important to make sure that the hotels that support that tourism have good water treatment for the sewage that they release, and that they aren’t also feeding this large population of visitors critically important reef fish. That is ecologically sound tourism. But you can’t just let it develop willy-nilly. It has to be managed carefully. Otherwise, you end up with lots of people and not much reef.”

Nancy Knowlton (1949) American biologist

Source: Nancy Knowlton https://web.archive.org/web/20081008104046/http://www.smithsonianmag.com:80/specialsections/ocean-hall/atm-qa-200809.html (September 2008)

People, Making love, Behavior, Support

“She is all peace, all quiet,
All passionate desires, the eloquent thunder
Of new, glad suns, shouting aloud for joy,
Over fresh worlds and clean, trampling the air
Like stooping hawks, to the long wind of horns,
Flung from the bastions of Eternity...
And she is the low lake, drowsy and gentle,
And good words spoken from the tongues of friends,
And calmness in the evening, and deep thoughts,
Falling like dreams from the stars' solemn mouths.
All these.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Source: Young Adventure (1918), The Lover in Hell

World, Peace, Dreams, Star

“Even the victor in a just cause is susceptible to the passions which war arouses. Every inhuman feeling is at once exacerbated. Truth, decency, morality, justice are the first casualties in any war. The accumulated effect makes a just settlement impossible. ... The pacifist treasures justice, liberty; but he believes that they can only be lastingly secured by peaceable means and that the use of force will only contaminate them. ... Armaments themselves provide an independent cause of war owing to the suspicion and fear which they breed. ... Unilateral disarmament offers the only way to escape once the policy of collateral disarmament has failed.”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

Source: Article in Young Oxford and War (1934), quoted in Mervyn Jones, Michael Foot (1994), p. 30

War, Truth, Fear, Making love

“The Path of Purification is the Probationary Path, on which certain qualifications must be developed; the Path of Illumination is the Path of Holiness, subdivided into four stages, each of which is entered by a special Initiation, symbolized among Christians as the Birth, Baptism, Transfiguration, and Passion of Christ; the Path of Union is the attainment of Masterhood, Liberation, Final Salvation.”

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

Source: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

Birth, Christ

“We’ve been doing this for awhile, when you’ve been doing this a long time, you cross your fingers and hope for the best, but you never know. To find an audience that’s passionate, that’s as good as it gets.”

Jonas Pate (1970) American screenwriter, director and producer

Brothers born in Winston-Salem have a hit with 'Outer Banks' https://journalnow.com/entertainment/brothers-born-in-winston-salem-have-a-hit-with-outer-banks/article_5480fa10-b39b-5d7e-b71d-3b8dc2615760.html (April 25, 2020)

Hope, Time

“Our fathers, in New England, in the Middle Colonies, and in the South, brought African slaves to America for reasons of their own, which it is impossible to justify, and useless now to censure. The God of our fathers has set them free by overruling a vast amount of human selfishness and passion in long-continued political and military conflict. Let the dead past bury its dead. Forgetting the things which are behind, let us reach forth to those things which are before.”

John Albert Broadus (1827–1895) American pastor and theologian

"As to the Colored People" (1 February 1883), as quoted in Report on Slavery and Racism in the History of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary https://sbts-wordpress-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/sbts/uploads/2018/12/Racism-and-the-Legacy-of-Slavery-Report-v4.pdf#page=6 (December 2018), by R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, pp. 38–39

God, Past, Selfishness, Dead

“I think there has to be a mutual respect. If there is maturity, it should become apparent to them that you are happy doing it and this is what you want to do. As a second generation, we have all these resources: Do we do what we want or follow passion?”

Hannah Song American activist

LiNK’s Hannah Song: Forever Committed to a Cause https://web.archive.org/web/20160414025408/ttp://www.mochimag.com/article/links-hannah-song-forever-committed-to-a-cause (2010)

Happiness, Thinking

“The distant souls, united by destiny, shorten distances, increase tension by merging into one and intense passion.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Le anime lontane ma unite dal destino accorciano le distanze, aumentano la tensione fondendosi in un'unica ed intensa passione.
Source: prevale.net

Soul, Distant

“Radio, a job for those who have deep passion in the soul and desire to share emotions.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) La radio, un lavoro per chi ha profonda passione nell'anima e voglia di condividere emozioni.
Source: prevale.net

Soul

“Only the disciplined ones are free in life. If you are undisciplined you are a slave to your moods, you are a slave to your passions.”

Eliud Kipchoge (1984) Kenyan long-distance runner

Eliud Kipchoge (2018) cited in: " Eliud Kipchoge & David Bedford | Full Address and Q&A | Oxford Union https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc00mDtzIJU" in Oxford Union, 5 January 2018.

Life, Mood

“The summit of evil, the crime most natural to the devil, pride, was born of knowledge. But if this is so, how can it be possible that all the passions result from ignorance? Does knowledge purify the psyche? Paul says: Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up”

Gregory Palamas (1296–1359) Monk and archbishop

1 Corinthians 8:1
Source: Holy Hesychia: The Stillness that Knows God, p. 33

Love, Making love, Nature, Knowledge

“One side of the soul is carried away by the passionate part in man, and we are then captivated by the good things of this life, but the other side of the soul frequently delights in the activity of the intellect and, as a result, when we practice self-restraint, the intellect longs to pursue heavenly beauty.”

Diadochos of Photiki (400–486) Byzantine saint

§ 28
On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination (480 AD)

Life, Beauty, Soul, Parting

“As a director, I was able to journey into these plays, find myself, and realise the worlds the playwrights have written…I find my inspiration and my passion in other writers and their versions of this country and this world.”

Chay Yew (1975) Singaoprean playwriter

On directing versus playwriting in “Artistic director Chay Yew: ‘Audiences come here wanting a dialogue about America’” https://www.thestage.co.uk/features/interviews/2019/artistic-director-chay-yew-audiences-come-here-wanting-to-have-a-dialogue-about-america/ in The Stage (2019 Aug 5)

World, Country

“Shall Earth no more inspire thee,
Thou lonely dreamer now?
Since passion may not fire thee
Shall Nature cease to bow?
Thy mind is ever moving
In regions dark to thee;
Recall its useless roving —
Come back and dwell with me”

Emily Brontë (1818–1848) English novelist and poet

Shall Earth No More Inspire Thee (May 1841)

Nature

“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.”

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

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.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

Drink

“It is God’s will, as to mine understanding, that we have Three Manners of Beholding His blessed Passion. The First is: the hard Pain that He suffered”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

with contrition and compassion. And that shewed our Lord in this time, and gave me strength and grace to see it.
The Eighth Revelation, Chapter 21

God, Pain, Understanding, Suffering

“The people who have sufficient passion for the truth to give the truth a chance to prevail, if it runs counter to their bias, are in a minority. How important is this "minority?"”

Leó Szilárd (1898–1964) Physicist and biologist

It is difficult to say at this point, for, at the present time their influence on governmental decisions is not perceptible.
Are We on the Road to War?

People, Truth, Chance

“War taken at the best is a frightful scourge to the human race; but because it is so the wisdom of ages has surrounded it with strict laws and usages, and has required formalities to be observed which shall act as a curb upon the wild passions of man, to prevent that scourge from being let loose unless under circumstances of full deliberation and from absolute necessity. You have dispensed with all these precautions.”

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

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1857/mar/03/resolution-moved-resumed-debate-fourth#column_1802 in the House of Commons against the Second Opium War (3 March 1857) 1850s

Wisdom, War, Age, Law

“A woman's kiss turns off rationality and ignites passion.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

From the Quotes http://www.prevale.net/quotes.html page of the official website of Prevale Original: (it) Il bacio di una donna spegne la razionalità ed accende la passione. Source: prevale.net

Kiss

“Ariel’s very sweet; she’s very nice. She’s also a redhead, I’m gonna teach you about redheads some day. They’re very passionate, very passionate people.”

Jason Momoa (1979) American actor and model

12 November 2019 https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/13/entertainment/kelly-clarkson-jason-momoa-trnd/index.html speaking to Kelly Clarkson's children Remington Alexander Blackstock (son age three) and River Rose Blackstock (daughter age five)

People