Quotes about passion

Passion costs me too much to bestow it on every trifle.

— Thomas Adams

Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.

— Henri Frederic Amiel

The fire which enlightens is the same fire which consumes.

— Henri Frederic Amiel

Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.

— Honore De Balzac

To hide a passion totally (or even to hide, more simply, its excess) is inconceivable: not because the human subject is too weak, but because passion is in essence made to be seen: the hiding must be seen: I want you to know that I am hiding something from you, that is the active paradox I must resolve: at one and the same time it must be known and not known: I want you to know that I don't want to show my feelings: that is the message I address to the other.

— Roland Barthes

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

The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.

— Christian Nevell Bovee

Passion doesn't look beyond the moment of its existence.

— Christian Nevell Bovee

I don't think I can play any other way but all out. I enjoy the game so much because I'm putting so much into it.

— George Brett

Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television.

— Rita Mae Brown

Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humor and passion.

— Sir Thomas Browne

I'd rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate.

— George Burns

There is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever. Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state?

— Lord Byron

In her first passion, a woman loves her lover, in all the others all she loves is love.

— Lord Byron

If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn't have opened for anyone else.

— Joseph Campbell

All passions exaggerate; and they are passions only because they do exaggerate.

— Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort

He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.

— Marcus T. Cicero

My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.

— Bette Davis

Only passions, great passions can elevate the soul to great things.

— Denis Diderot

There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.

— Denis Diderot

Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers but dress in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to their appetite.

— George Eliot

Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Jupiter, not wanting man's life to be wholly gloomy and grim, has bestowed far more passion than reason --you could reckon the ration as twenty-four to one. Moreover, he confined reason to a cramped corner of the head and left all the rest of the body to the passions.

— Desiderius Erasmus

There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life.

— Frederico Fellini

It is the passions that do and undo everything.

— Bernard Le Bovier Fontenelle

A man in passion rides a horse that runs away with him.

— Thomas Fuller

Our passion are the true phoenixes; when the old one is burnt out, a new one rises from its ashes.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

It seemed to me pretty plain, that they had more of love than matrimony in them.

— Oliver Goldsmith

We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.

— Georg Hegel

He who has no passion has no principal or motive to act.

— Claude A. Helvetius

Every man without passion has within him no principle of action, nor motive of act.

— Claude A. Helvetius

You can no more bridle passions with logic than you can justify them in the law courts. Passions are facts and not dogmas.

— Alexander Herzen

There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.

— Eric Hoffer

I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.

— Carl Jung

What our age lacks is not reflection, but passion.

— Søren Kierkegaard

Few people have ever seriously wished to be exclusively rational. The good life which most desire is a life warmed by passions and touched with that ceremonial grace which is impossible without some affectionate loyalty to traditional form and ceremonies.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

In the human heart new passions are forever being born; the overthrow of one almost always means the rise of another.

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

If we resist our passions, it is more through their weakness than from our strength.

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The passions are the only orators which always persuade.

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Private passions tire and exhaust themselves, public ones never.

— Alphonse De Lamartine

He submits to be seen through a microscope, who suffers himself to be caught in a fit of passion.

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

It is really important that young people find something that they want to do and pursue it with passion. I'm very passionate about filmmaking. It's what I love to do.

— Spike Lee

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

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

It is foolish to pretend that one is fully recovered from a disappointed passion. Such wounds always leave a scar.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Passions spin the plot: We are betrayed by what is false within.

— George Meredith

Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music -- the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.

— Henry Miller

None, but people of strong passion are capable of rising to greatness.

— Gabriel Riqueti Mirabeau

Get into a line that you will find to be a deep personal interest, something you really enjoy spending twelve to fifteen hours a day working at, and the rest of the time thinking about.

— Earl Nightingale

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.

— Blaise Pascal

Passion makes the best observations and the sorriest conclusions.

— Jean Paul

Passion is the mob of the man, that commits a riot upon his reason.

— William Penn

The ruling passion, be it what it will, The ruling passion conquers reason still.

— Alexander Pope

Passions are the gales of life.

— Alexander Pope

Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after.

— Alexander Pope

As a bathtub lined with white porcelain, when the hot water gives out or goes tepid, so is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion, o my much praised but-not-altogether-satisfactory lady.

— Ezra Pound

I'm very determined and stubborn. There's a desire in me that makes me want to do more and more, and to do it right. Each one of us has a fire in our heart for something. It's our goal in life to find it and to keep it lit.

— Mary Lou Retton

There is no greatness without a passion to be great, whether it's the aspiration of an athlete or an artist, a scientist, a parent, or a businessperson.

— Anthony Robbins

Passion is the genesis of genius.

— Anthony Robbins

Live with passion!

— Anthony Robbins

Three passions simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life; the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.

— Bertrand Russell

They declaim against the passions without bothering to think that it is from their flame philosophy lights its torch.

— Marquis De Sade

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Our passions are the winds that propel our vessel. Our reason is the pilot that steers her. Without winds the vessel would not move and without a pilot she would be lost.

— Saying

The person who does not work for the love of work but only for money is not likely to make money nor to find much fun in life.

— Charles M. Schwab

I was born to be a runner. I simply love to run. It's almost like the faster I go, the easier it becomes.

— Mary Decker Slaney

Passion is in all great searches and is necessary to all creative endeavors.

— Eugene W. Smith

Passion is the drunkenness of the mind.

— Bishop Robert South

Whenever I get to a low point, I go back to the basics. I ask myself, Why am I doing this? It comes down to passion.

— Lyn St. James

Do what you love. Know you own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

— Henry David Thoreau

Passion is the trigger of success.

— Source Unknown

The happiness in this life does not consist of being devoid of passion, but mastering them.

— Source Unknown

There is some place where your specialties can shine. Somewhere that difference can be expressed. It's up to you to find it, and you can.

— David Viscott

Anyone who seeks to destroy the passions instead of controlling them is trying to play the angel.

— Voltaire

Chase your passion, not your pension.

— Denis Waitley

She is so totally absorbed in a vocation -- both a gift and a mastering passion -- that she has no time to be absorbed with the self's worries about itself. And that is the moral of the story: You can pursue happiness by wearing a torn jersey. You can catch it by being good at something you love.

— George F. Will

I always tried to make clear that basketball is not the ultimate. It is of small importance in comparison to the total life we live. There is only one kind of life that truly wins, and that is the one that places faith in the hands of the Savior. Until that is done, we are on an aimless course that runs in circles and goes nowhere.

— John Wooden

We could hardly wait to get up in the morning.

— Wilbur Wright

But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!

— Jack Kerouac

In necessary things, unity; in doubtful things, liberty; in all things, charity.

— Anne Baxter

Compassion has no place in the natural order of the world which operates on the basis of necessity. Compassion opposes this order and is therefore best thought of as being in some way supernatural.

— John Berger

I know the compassion of others is a relief at first. I don't despise it. But it can't quench pain, it slips through your soul as through a sieve. And when our suffering has been dragged from one pity to another, as from one mouth to another, we can no longer respect or love it.

— Georges Bernanos

Out of compassion I destroy the darkness of their ignorance. From within them I light the lamp of wisdom and dispel all darkness from their lives.

— Bhagavad Gita

The dew of compassion is a tear.

— Lord Byron

I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance.

— Pablo Casals

The individual is capable of both great compassion and great indifference. He has it within his means to nourish the former and outgrow the latter.

— Norman Cousins

Man may dismiss compassion from his heart, but God never will.

— William Cowper

The mind is no match with the heart in persuasion; constitutionality is no match with compassion.

— Everett M. Dirksen

You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion.

— Meister Eckhart

We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves.

— George Eliot

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

— Samuel Johnson

There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.

— Milan Kundera

Compassion is no substitute for justice.

— Rush Limbaugh

When an individual fear or apathy passes by the unfortunate, life is of no account.

— Haniel Long

Christianity demands a level of caring that transcends human inclinations.

— Erwin W. Lutzer

Care is a state in which something does matter; it is the source of human tenderness.

— Rollo May

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another

— Thomas Merton

Saving lives is not a top priority in the halls of power. Being compassionate and concerned about human life can cause a man to lose his job. It can cause a woman not to get the job to begin with.

— Myriam Miedzian