quotations about passion
In the human heart there is a perpetual generation of passions; so that the ruin of one is almost always the foundation of another.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
What is passion? It is surely the becoming of a person. Are we not, for most of our lives, marking time? Most of our being is at rest, unlived. In passion, the body and the spirit seek expression outside of self. Passion is all that is other from self. Sex is only interesting when it releases passion. The more extreme and the more expressed that passion is, the more unbearable does life seem without it. It reminds us that if passion dies or is denied, we are partly dead and that soon, come what may, we will be wholly so.
JOHN BOORMAN
Projections
With men passion is all at the beginning and with women it is all along.
ANITA BROOKNER
The Paris Review, fall 1987
Passion may not unfitly be termed the mob of the man, that commits a riot upon his reason.
WILLIAM PENN
Fruits of Solitude
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
Distant Shores
Passionate persons are like men who stand upon their head; they see all things the wrong way.
PLATO
attributed, Day's Collacon
Passion should not, in theory, offer any advantage, but should merely level out the playing field and make sport the spectacle that it so often is; passion is simply an inherently natural part of sport, it is not as the media hype train would like to argue, a phenomenon that raises its head only at those particularly heated derbies and grudge matches.
ADAM HILSENRATH
"The fundamentals of sporting passion", Cherwell Online, December 4, 2016
The most stormy ebullitions of passion, from blasphemy to murder, are less terrific than one single act of cool villainy.
JOHANN KASPAR LAVATER
Aphorisms on Man
If passion is a drug, your startup should be OD'ing on it all the time! If there's something you aren't passionate about, it's really hard to come to work, feel motivated, and full of energy. So, passion is almost an underlying requirement to form great culture as people driven by passion are usually able to do well even in new domains and uncharted territories.
VINOD MUTHUKRISHNAN
"Culture begets success. Or does it?", Your Story, December 10, 2016
Passion doth sometimes whirl the torch of Love, lest into Friendship fade the waning flame.
RICHARD GARNETT
De Flagello Myrtes
My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.
ALLEN GINSBERG
journal, July 30, 1947
Passion is the genesis of genius.
LILLET WALTERS
Secrets of Successful Speakers
Passion is like a ruin, which, in falling upon its victim, breaks itself to pieces.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Passion and reason are ever at war.
ROBERT BAGE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Strong passions work wonders when there is a greater strength of reason to curb them.
ABRAHAM TUCKER
An Abridgment of The Light of Nature Pursued
Every spendthrift passion has its attendant courtiers.
DORIS LESSING
Shikasta
Passions are likened best to floods and streams:
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.
WALTER RALEIGH
The Silent Lover
Passion is a sort of fever in the mind, which ever leaves us weaker than it found us.... It more than anything deprives us of the use of our judgment; for it raises a dust very hard to see through. Like wine, whose lees fly by being jogg'd, it is too muddy to drink.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Our passions are the keys of our frame, played upon by external objects.
RICHARD MALTRAVERS
The Life and Opinions of Sir Richard Maltravers
We are all alike, and we love to keep passion aglow at our feet,
Like one that sitteth in shade and complacently smiles at the heat.
ALFRED AUSTIN
"A Woman's Apology"