Quotes about passion
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“To create souls in men, to create fine happiness and fine despair she must remain deeply proud - proud to be inviolate, proud also to be melting, to be passionate and possessed.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Men, Happiness, Soul, Despair

“One of the things that we were trying to do with this show was the complexities of relationships and love. There is both passion and longing and a bittersweet quality to it that is a part of life.”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

Source: Tim Burton's Corpse Bride: An Invitation to the Wedding

Love, Life, Parting

“Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Life, Beauty

“Anything less than mad, passionate, extraordinary love is a waste of time. There are too many mediocre things in life to deal with and love shouldn't be one of them.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Love, Life, Time, Madness

“Oh yes, I know the way to heaven was easy. We found the little kingdom of our passion that all can share who walk the road of lovers. In wild and secret happiness we stumbled; and gods and demons clamoured in our senses.”

Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) English poet, diarist and memoirist

Source: The Poems of Wilfred Owen

God, Happiness, Secret, Way

“The greatest mania of all is passion: and I am a natural slave to passion: the balance between my brain and my soul and my body is as wild and delicate as the skin of a Ming vase.”

Hunter S. Thompson book The Curse of Lono

Source: The Curse of Lono

Soul, Nature

“One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.”

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

Feeling, Lovers, Thinking

“He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

We Had Him (2009)
Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Context: Though we are many, each of us is achingly alone, piercingly alone.
Only when we confess our confusion can we remember that he was a gift to us and we did have him.
He came to us from the creator, trailing creativity in abundance.
Despite the anguish, his life was sheathed in mother love, family love, and survived and did more than that.
He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his.

“A manwhat he has passion about,” Breeze said. “I’ve found that if you give up what you want most for what youyou should want more, you’ll just end up miserable.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Hero of Ages

“I suppose I do have one embarrassing passion- I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately.”

Susan Orlean (1955) American journalist

Source: The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession

Feeling

“A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

Love, God, Suffering, Time

“My heart in passion, and my head on rhymes.”

George Gordon Byron Don Juan

Source: Don Juan

Heart

“What a strange world it is where you can have as much sex as you like but love is taboo. I'm talking about the real thing, the grand passion, which may not allow affection or convenience or happiness. The truth is that love smashes into your life like an ice floe, and even if your heart is built like the Titanic you go down. That's the size of it, the immensity of it. It's not proper, it's not clean, it's not containable.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: The Powerbook (2000)

Love, Life, Happiness, Truth

“Be grateful that you only see the outward man. Be grateful that you never see the passions, the hatreds, the jealousies, the malice, the sicknesses… Be grateful you rarely see the frightening truth in people.”

Alfred Bester book The Demolished Man

Source: The Demolished Man

People, Truth, Jealousy

“Passion paralyzes good taste.”

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

Source: Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

“If it weren't for greed, intolerance, hate, passion and murder, you would have no works of art, no great buildings, no medical science, no Mozart, no Van Gough, no Muppets and no Louis Armstrong.”

Jasper Fforde book The Big Over Easy

Source: The Big Over Easy

Hate, Art, Science

“It is an absurdity to believe that the Deity has human passions, and one of the lowest of human passions, a restless appetite for applause”

David Hume (1711–1776) Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian

“I have defined poetry as a 'passionate pursuit of the Real.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

“It's the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

Soul

“Our passions are ourselves.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

“Alas! when passion is both meek and wild!”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

“That memory made a lump form in my throat as I remembered his face, serious and gorgeous, those brown eyes intense and passionate as he spoke up for me and convinced the others of my value.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Memory

“An infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

“Picnics are very dear to those who are in the first stage of the tender passion.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

“Bee to the blossom, moth to the flame; Each to his passion; what's in a name?”

Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–1885) Novelist, poet, writer, activist

Bee

“She could understand suddenly why people talked about passion as fire: She felt as if they had caught aflame and were burning like the dry Malibu hills, about to become ashes that would mix together forever.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

People, Understanding

“It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Source: Reflections on the Revolution in France

Men

“Desires, memories, fears, passions form labyrinths in which we lose and find and then lose ourselves again.”

Bernhard Schlink book The Reader

Source: The Reader

Fear, Memory

“Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes.”

Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist

Music, Time, Clothes

“He had known the love that is fed on caresses and feeds them; but this passion that was closer than his bones was not to be superficially satisfied.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

Love

“The passion of laughter is nothing else but a sudden glory arising from sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmities of others, or with our own formerly…”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic Pt. I Human Nature (1640) Ch. 9
Source: Leviathan

Laughter

“Riding a horse is not a gentle hobby, to be picked up and laid down like a game of solitaire. It is a grand passion. It seizes a person whole and once it has done so, he/she will have to accept that his life will be radically changed.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Life, Game, Change, Horse

“I love her passionately with a morbid intensity; madly as one can only love a woman who never responds to our love with anything but an eternally uniform, eternally calm, stony smile.”

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch book Venus in Furs

Source: Venus in Furs

Love, Smile

“Only write from your own passion, your own truth. That's the only thing you really know about, and anything else leads you away from the pulse.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Truth

“The three most harmful negative emotions are anger, guilt, and fear. And anger is number one. It is also the strongest and most dangerous of all passions.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Source: Living Beyond Your Feelings: Controlling Emotions So They Don't Control You

Fear, Anger

“Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.”

James Joyce book The Dead

Dubliners (1914)
Variant: One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.
Source: "The Dead"

Age, World

“If you aren't nervous about your passion, you aren't passionate about it.”

Bobby Flay (1964) American celebrity chef, restaurateur and reality television personality

“Like me, he has a searing belief that books are sacred. They might not be to other people, but when you have a passion, you hold on to it. You defend it. You dont pretend it isn't important at the risk of offending others." -Carrie.”

Candace Bushnell book Summer and the City

Source: Summer and the City

People, Books

“I want to rip off your logic
and make passionate sense to you.”

Jeffrey McDaniel (1967) American writer

Sense

“It’s the same thing. Passion is passion. It’s the excitement between the tedious spaces, and it doesn’t matter where it’s directed.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

“but curiosity is a restless and scrupulous passion, and no one girl can endure, with patience, that hers should be baffled by another.”

J. Sheridan Le Fanu book Carmilla

Source: Carmilla

Girl, Patience

“Advice for a human

86. To like something is to insult it. Love it or hate it. Be passionate. As civilisation advances, so does indifference. It is a disease. Immunize yourself with art. And love.”

Matt Haig (1975) British writer

Source: The Humans

Love, Hate, Disease, Art

“Kev wasn't certain if he was surrendering to Win or to his own passion for her. Only that there was no more holding back. He would take her. And he would give her everything he had, every part of his soul, even the broken pieces.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Seduce Me at Sunrise

Soul, Parting

“She was aware that in love even the most passionate idealism will not rid the body's surface of its terrible, basic importance.”

Milan Kundera book Laughable Loves

Source: Laughable Loves

Love

“Passionately obsessed by anything we love--an avalanche of magic flattens the way ahead, levels, rules, reasons, dissents, bears us with it over chasms, fears, doubts. Without the power of that love….”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

Love, Fear, Way

“Certainly no one has ever died of an unrequited passion—it's usually the ones that are requited that get people in trouble.”

Mercedes Lackey (1950) American novelist and short story writer

Source: Four & Twenty Blackbirds

People

“Do you know my friend that each one of us is a dark mystery, a maze of conflicting passions and desire and aptitudes?”

Agatha Christie book Lord Edgware Dies

Source: Lord Edgware Dies

“My continuing passion is to part a curtain, that invisible veil of indifference that falls between us and that blinds us to each other's presence, each other's wonder, each other's human plight.”

Eudora Welty (1909–2001) American author

Parting, Indifference

“She succumbed to the eternal feminine passion for bargains.”

Georgette Heyer book Cotillion

Source: Cotillion

“I'd been blindsided with the most painful knowledge: the first man to ever say he loved me had never loved me at all.

His passion had been artificial.

His pursuit of me had been choreographed.”

Charlaine Harris book Definitely Dead

Source: Definitely Dead

Love, Pain, Knowledge

“Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 75
The True Believer (1951), Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice
Context: Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both.

Life

“She looked into the staring glass eyes and complacent face, and suddenly a sort of heartbroken rage seized her. She lifted her little savage hand and knocked Emily off the chair, bursting into a passion of sobbing- Sara who never cried.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett A Little Princess

Source: A Little Princess

Rage

“Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.”

Cal Newport (1982) American computer scientist

Source: So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love

“The light of truth burns without a flicker in the depths of a house that is shaken with storms of passion and fear.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Truth, Fear, Light, Housing

“Would you complain because a beautiful sunset doesn't have a future or a shooting star a payoff? And why should romance 'lead anywhere'? Passion isn't a path through the woods. Passionthe woods.”

Tom Robbins Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Source: Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Beauty, Star, Future

“How little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Happiness

“A work-in-progress generates its own energy field. You, the artist or entrepreneur, are pouring love into the work; you are suffusing it with passion and intention and hope.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: Do the Work

Love, Hope

“I wanted to learn more of love- that is built not on the shifting sands of violent passion but on the steady rock of deep and abiding affection.”

Eleanor Hibbert (1906–1993) English novelist

Source: The Shadow of the Lynx

Love, Learning

“Since the invention of the kiss, there have only been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind.”

William Goldman (1931–2018) American novelist, screenwriter and playwright

Kiss, Relationship, For Him, For Boyfriend

“Human passions have mysterious ways, in children as well as grown-ups. Those affected by them can’t explain them, and those who haven’t known them have no understanding of them at all.”

Michael Ende book The Neverending Story

Source: The Neverending Story

Children, Way, Understanding

“Anger is the most impotent of passions. It effects nothing it goes about, and hurts the one who is possessed by it more than the one against whom it is directed.”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

Hurt, Anger

“God created me—and you—to live with a single, all-embracing, all-transforming passion—namely, a passion to glorify God by enjoying and displaying his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life.”

John Piper (1946) American writer

Source: Don't Waste Your Life

Life, God

“It's better to get lost in the passion than to lose the passion”

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

“You're a leader. It's your job to keep your passion hot. Do whatever you have to do, read whatever you have to read, go wherever you have to go to stay fired up. And don't apologize to anybody.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Source: Courageous Leadership

Reading

“I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Hate, Idea, Thinking, Time

“You shook his hand?" Adrian asked incredulously
…
“With all that red-hot passion, it’s a wonder you guys can stay away from each other”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Guy

“This is the very worst wickedness, that we refuse to acknowledge the passionate evil that is in us.”

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

Evil

“Are some people destined for a great fate, or to do great things? Or is it only that they're born somehow with that great passion -- and if they find themselves in the right circumstances, then things happen? It's the sort of thing you wonder…”

Diana Gabaldon book Voyager

Source: Voyager

Fate, People

“The saddest people I've ever met in life are the ones who don't care deeply about anything at all. Passion and satisfaction go hand in hand, and without them, any happiness is only temporary, because there's nothing to make it last.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Life, Happiness, People

“The source of sexual power is curiosity, passion. You are watching its little flame die of asphyxiation.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: A Cafe in Space: The Anais Nin Literary Journal, Volume 3

“Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter (1850), Chapter XV: Hester and Pearl

Men, Heart

“I wasn't acting on passion. I was simply acting.”

Bret Easton Ellis The Rules of Attraction

Source: The Rules of Attraction

“Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God idea, not God Himself.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

God, Idea, Heart, Despair

“Faith is a passionate intuition.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Source: Garbled version of c. l 1295 of Despondency Corrected (Vol. 5 of W's Poetical Works on Gurenberg)

Faith

“She was so intelligent that she could think herself into beauty. Intelligence… they don't talk about it much, the poets, but when a woman is intelligent and passionate and good…”

Eva Ibbotson A Company of Swans

Source: A Company of Swans

Beauty, Intelligence, Thinking

“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 3, Section 3
Part 3, Section 3
Source: A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 2: Of the passions
Context: We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.
Context: What may at first occur on this head, is, that as nothing can be contrary to truth or reason, except what has a reference to it, and as the judgments of our understanding only have this reference, it must follow, that passions can be contrary to reason only so far as they are accompany'd with some judgment or opinion. According to this principle, which is so obvious and natural, `tis only in two senses, that any affection can be call'd unreasonable. First, When a passion, such as hope or fear, grief or joy, despair or security, is founded on the supposition or the existence of objects, which really do not exist. Secondly, When in exerting any passion in action, we chuse means insufficient for the design'd end, and deceive ourselves in our judgment of causes and effects. Where a passion is neither founded on false suppositions, nor chuses means insufficient for the end, the understanding can neither justify nor condemn it. `Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. `Tis not contrary to reason for me to chuse my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me. `Tis as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledge'd lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter. A trivial good may, from certain circumstances, produce a desire superior to what arises from the greatest and most valuable enjoyment; nor is there any thing more extraordinary in this, than in mechanics to see one pound weight raise up a hundred by the advantage of its situation. In short, a passion must be accompany'd with some false judgment. in order to its being unreasonable; and even then `tis not the passion, properly speaking, which is unreasonable, but the judgment.