Quotes about passion
page 6

“Kissing - and I mean like, yummy, smacking kissing - is the most delicious, most beautiful and passionate thing that two people can do, bar none. Better than sex, hands down.”

Drew Barrymore (1975) American actress, director and producer

People, Beauty, Sex, Kiss

“And in this passion for understanding her soul lay close to his; she had him all to herself. But he must be made abstract first.”

D.H. Lawrence book Sons and Lovers

Source: Sons and Lovers

Soul, Understanding

“The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.”

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

History, Change

“Desire that your life count for something great! Long for your life to have eternal significance. Want this! Don’t coast through life without a passion.”

John Piper (1946) American writer

Source: Don't Waste Your Life

Life

“Somewhere between fear and sex passion is. The way there is sudden. The way out is worse.”

Jeanette Winterson book The Passion

Source: The Passion (1987)

Fear, Sex, Way

“It took me years to figure out that upset was upset, and tumultuousness was not the same thing as passion. Love isn't drama.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Secret Life of Prince Charming

Love

“The only noise now was the rain, pattering softly with the magnificent indifference of nature for the tangled passions of humans.”

Sherwood Smith (1951) American fantasy and science fiction writer

Nature, Indifference

“The opposite of fear is love - love of the challenge, love of the work, the pure joyous passion to take a shot at our dream and see if we can pull it off.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: Do the Work

Love, Fear, Dreams

“His kisses were gifts. He kissed with everything he had, with power and passion and hunger and love. He held nothing back, giving everything, exposing everything.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Reflected in You

Love, Hunger, Kiss

“If a man does not work passionately - even furiously - at being the best in the world at what he does, he fails his talent, his destiny, and his God.”

George Lois (1931) American art director, designer and author

God, World

“We mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom.”

Toni Morrison book The Bluest Eye

Source: The Bluest Eye

Freedom

“She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself. To all humankind besides Tess was only a passing thought. Even to friends she was no more than a frequently passing thought.”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

“Love, genuine passionate love, was his for the first time.”

Jack London book Call of the Wild

Source: The Call of the Wild

Love, Time

“Love is the most selfish of all the passions.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Source: The Three Musketeers

Love, Selfishness

“Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

“My New Year’s Eve Toast: to all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle — may they never give me peace.”

Patricia Highsmith (1921–1995) American novelist and short story writer

Love, Hate, Peace, Memory

“Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -how passionately I hate them!”

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

Hate

“I was half asleep but I smiled. In spite of all his irritating qualities, I couldn't help liking a man who despised a fictional character with such passion.”

David Benioff book City of Thieves

Source: City of Thieves

Smile, Help

“Perhaps your challenge isn't finding a better project or a better boss. Perhaps you need to get in touch with what it means to feel passionate. People with passion look for ways to make things happen.”

Seth Godin (1960) American entrepreneur, author and public speaker

Source: Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

People, Way, Feeling

“For it is only habit and memory that dulls the physical passion. Without memory, each night is the first night, each morning is the first morning, each kiss and touch are the first.”

Alan Lightman book Einstein's Dreams

Source: Einstein's Dreams

Kiss, Memory, Night

“Comfort and familiarity were wonderful but they also dulled passion and excitement. Predictability and habit made surprises almost impossible.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

“The greatest gift is the passion for reading.
It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites,
it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind.
It is a moral illumination.”

Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) Novelist, short story writer, literary critic

World, Knowledge, Reading

“The ancient dialogue between reason and the senses is almost always more interestingly and passionately resolved in favor of the senses.”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Sense

“What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?'

'I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is.”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris

God, Imagination, Idea

“It's like the Tibetan Wheel of the Passions. As the wheel turns, the values and feelings on the outer rim rise and fall, shining or sinking into darkness. But true love stays fastened to the axle and doesn't move.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

Love, Feeling

“This thing between them, this bond—it wasn’t just passion,
and it wasn’t wicked.
It was love, and it was divine.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: When He Was Wicked

Love

“That is like throwing two virgins into a bed. Enthusiasm, passion, and ignorance are not a good combination. Someone is likely to get hurt.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Hurt

“As long as that spark of passion is missing there is no human significance in the performance.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

“My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer

Source: Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus

Education, Reading

“Sports, politics, and religion are the three passions of the badly educated.”

William H. Gass (1924–2017) Fiction writer, critic, philosophy professor

Source: In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories

Education, Religion, Sport

“I taught him, 'he quavered, "to trust in love. I said:'when love comes, that is reality.' I said: 'Passion does not blind. No. Passion is sanity, and the woman you love, she is the only person you will ever really understand.”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

Love, Understanding, Reality, Personality

“It may be an infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be the act of a moment of passion: the latter is the heart’s choice.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

‘’It Shall Not Be Forgiven’’
Unspoken Sermons, First Series (1867)
Source: Unspoken Sermons: Series I, II, III

Forgiveness, Evil, Heart

“There I went again, building up a glamorous picture of a man who would love me passionately the minute he met me, and all out of a few prosy nothings.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Love

“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

Happiness

“Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every
generation may not come that far, but none comes further.”

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

Faith

“Suppose death had a heart to love and to release you, to whom would he turn this passion, would you chose a person from the crowd there. A person to suffer as you suffer.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Love, Death, Suffering, Heart

“My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Not a Kerouac quote, but by Allen Ginsberg in his journal of 30 July 1947. Published in The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice, page 199.
Misattributed

Failure

“Did I feel a physical desire for him? I did. Was I moved by a passion of my body? I was. Have I experienced the most violent form of sensual pleasure? I have.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Pleasure, Feeling

“Interests evolve into hobbies or volunteer work, which grow into passions. It takes time, more time than anyone imagines.”

Po Bronson (1964) American writer

Source: What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question

Imagination, Time

“Do you know that every great thing in the history of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that?”

John Fowles book The Collector

Source: The Collector

Love, Life, Truth, Beauty

“Captain Jack: Rose, you are worth fighting for.
[Jack kisses Rose passionately]
Captain Jack: Wish I'd never met you, Doctor, I was much better off as a coward.
[Jack kisses the Doctor the same way]”

Russell T. Davies (1963) Screenwriter, former executive producer of Doctor Who

Way, Kiss, Fight

“I do a first draft as passionately and as quickly as I can. I believe a story is valid only when it's immediate and passionate, when it dances out of your subconscious. If you interfere in any way, you destroy it.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Way, Dance

“You have never loved me as I love you--never--never! Yours is not a passionate heart--your heart does not burn in a flame! You are, upon the whole, a sort of fay, or sprite-- not a woman!”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Source: Jude the Obscure

Love, Heart

“I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World

Feeling

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

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

Art, Madness

“Lovers communicate not inside sentences, but between them. Passion lurks within interstice. It is grouting rather than bricks.”

Lionel Shriver book The Post-Birthday World

Source: The Post-Birthday World

Communication, Lovers

“Life tests the big dreamers the Passionate revolutionaries.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Life

“What passion cannot Music raise and quell?”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

St. 2. <br class="br"> A Song for St. Cecilia's Day http://www.englishverse.com/poems/a_song_for_st_cecilias_day_1687 (1687) <br class="br">Variant: What passion cannot Music raise and quell?

Music

“I am a jumble of passions, misgivings, and wants. It seems that I am always in a state of wishing and rarely in a state of contentment.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

“Finding your passion isn't just about careers and money. It's about finding your authentic self. The one you've buried beneath other people's needs.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: Distant Shores

Money, People

“I deserve passion," she said. "I deserve to be loved- in every way. I deserve a man who'll give his whole heart, not the part he isn't using at the moment..”

Loretta Chase (1949) American writer

Source: Silk Is for Seduction

Love, Way, Heart, Parting

“My reasoning, if one can call it that, was inflamed by the scatter shot passions of youth and a literary diet overly rich in the works of Nietzshe, Kerouac, and John Menlove Edwards…”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Youth

“Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules
Passions, desires, and fears, is more a king.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Source: Paradise Regained by John Milton

Fear

“Wizard's Third Rule
Passion rules reason, for better or for worse.”

Terry Goodkind Blood of the Fold

Source: Blood of the Fold

“It is our ignorance of things that causes all our admiration and chiefly excites our passions.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Source: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

“You've got to follow your passion. You've got to figure out what it is you love--who you really are. And have the courage to do that. I believe that the only courage anybody ever needs is the courage to follow your own dreams.”

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

Love, Dreams, Courage

“I like the way Mahler wandered about in his music and still retained his
passion. He must have looked like an
earthquake walking down the street.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

Music, Way

“He looks at you like you're someone he's never met before, much less someone he once loved with high passion. The irony is, you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You're a pathetic mess, unrecognizable even to your own eyes.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Love

“She loved with so much passion as she loved with ignorance. She did not know whether it were good or evil, beneficent or dangerous, necessary or accidental, eternal or transitory, permitted or prohibited: she loved.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Love, Evil

“A woman's love is quick to turn into a passion for revenge--an obsession that becomes an endless river of blood, flowing on from generation to generation.”

Fumiko Enchi book Masks

Source: Masks

Love, Revenge

“Damn you, Sassenach!" his voice said, from a very great distance. His voice was choked with passion. "Dam you! I swear if ye die on me, I'll kill you!”

Diana Gabaldon book Voyager

Source: Voyager

“Transferring your passion to your job is far easier than finding a job that happens to match your passion.”

Seth Godin (1960) American entrepreneur, author and public speaker

Source: Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

“Accounts are not quite settled between us," said she, with a passion that equaled my own. "I can love, and I can hate. You had your choice. You chose to spurn the first; now you must test the other.”

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

Love, Hate

“What a great thing, to be loved! What a greater thing still, to love! The heart becomes heroic though passion…if no one loved, the sun would go out.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Love, Sun, Heart

“To care passionately for another human creature brings always more sorrow than joy; but at the same time, Elinor, one would not be without experience. Anyone who has never really loved has never really lived..”

Agatha Christie book Sad Cypress

Source: Sad Cypress

Love, Time, Joy

“One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.”

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

People, Personality

“isn't it funny how danger makes people passionate?”

Zelda Fitzgerald book Save Me the Waltz

Source: Save Me the Waltz

People

“Be loyal to what you love, be true to the earth, fight your enemies with passion and laughter.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Source: Confessions of a Barbarian

Love, Laughter, Fight

“If you write with passion in your own style, you will make a place for yourself”

Dean Koontz (1945) American author

“Maybe it’s just in America, but it seems that if you’re passionate about something, it freaks people out. You’re considered bizarre or eccentric. To me, it just means you know who you are.”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

People

“Life is a paradise for those who love many things with a passion.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Love, Life

“The Herondales are a rather infamous line, as you probably know. Many of them heroes, some of them traitors, so many of them brash, wild creatures consumed by their passions, whether it be love or hate.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Lost Herondale

Love, Hate

“Passion, you see, can be destroyed by a doctor. It cannot be created.”

Peter Shaffer Equus

Source: Equus

“Christ did not die to make good works merely possible or to produce a half-hearted pursuit. He died to produce in us a passion for good deeds. Christian purity is not the mere avoidance of evil, but the pursuit of good.”

John Piper (1946) American writer

Source: The Passion of Jesus Christ

Evil, Heart, Christ

“Pursuing your passions makes you more interesting, and interesting people are enchanting.”

Guy Kawasaki (1954) American businessman and author

People

“If you want to love what you do, abandon the passion mindset (“what can the world offer me?”) and instead adopt the craftsman mindset (“what can I offer the world?”).”

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

Love, World

“I, while the gods laugh, the world's vortex am;
Maelström of passions in that hidden sea
Whose waves of all-time lap the coasts of me;
And in small compass the dark waters cram.”

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

Source: Collected Poems

God, World, Water, Time

“Mobs have passions, not brains.”

Dan Simmons book The Fall of Hyperion

Source: The Fall of Hyperion (1990), Chapter 32 (p. 266)

“Passion does not blind. No. Passion is sanity, and the woman you love, she is the only person you will ever really understand.”

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

Love, Understanding, Personality

“But whatever you do, find the God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated passion of your life, and find your way to say it and live for it and die for it. And you will make a difference that lasts. You will not waste your life.”

John Piper (1946) American writer

Source: Don't Waste Your Life

Life, God, Way, Christ

“Men of passion and vision are often seen as mad.”

Robin Hobb book Royal Assassin

Source: Royal Assassin

Men, Madness

“The effort of explaining, even of expressing himself, had become, with the years, more and more terrifying to him. Whether from laziness or from inability to find the right words, he had developed almost a passion for silence.”

Francois Mauriac (1885–1970) French author

Source: Thérèse

Effort, Silence

“True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers, and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one's life”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Life, Lovers

“What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Source: Essay on Man and Other Poems

“Life is short, and potential studies infinite. We have a much better chance of accomplishing something significant when we follow our passionate interests and work in areas of deepest personal meaning.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

Life, Study, Chance, Personality

“Passion gives you energy.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth: Live Them and Reach Your Potential

“What a test that is: more than devotion, admiration, passion. If you long and long for someone’s company you love them.”

Iris Murdoch book The Sea, the Sea

Source: The Sea, the Sea

Love

“Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Memory

“Before anything else I was a woman who was capable of passion and who had a great need and a great desire for love.”

Philippa Gregory book The Other Boleyn Girl

Source: The Other Boleyn Girl

Love

“Such physical matters were nice, yet, to him, intelligence and passion born of living, the ability to move and be moved by subtleties of the mind and spirit, were what really counted.”

Robert James Waller The Bridges of Madison County

Source: The Bridges of Madison County

Intelligence

“I want to rip off your logic and make passionate sense to you. I want to ride in the swing of your hips. My fingers will dig in you like quotation marks, blazing your limbs into parts of speech.”

Jeffrey McDaniel (1967) American writer

Sense, Parting

“Passion has little to do with euphoria and everything to do with patience. It is not about feeling good. It is about endurance. Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

Feeling, Suffering, Patience

“But man, because he has only one life to live, cannot conduct experiments to test whether to follow his passion (compassion) or not.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Life

“Chase your passion, not your pension.”

Denis Waitley (1933) American writer

“In cities men cannot be prevented from concerting together, and from awakening a mutual excitement which prompts sudden and passionate resolutions. Cities may be looked upon as large assemblies, of which all the inhabitants are members; their populace exercises a prodigious influence upon the magistrates, and frequently executes its own wishes without their intervention.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Variant translation: In towns it is impossible to prevent men from assembling, getting excited together and forming sudden passionate resolves. Towns are like great meeting houses with all the inhabitants as members. In them the people wield immense influence over their magistrates and often carry their desires into execution without intermediaries.
Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XV-IXX, Chapter XVII.

Men, Exercises