P is for PASSION

Passion costs too much to bestow it upon every trifle.
- Thomas Adam

It is with our passions as it is with fire and water, they are good servants, but bad masters.
- Aesop

Whereas the law is passionless, passion must ever sway the heart of man.
- Aristotle



Let passion reach a catastrophe and it submits us to an intoxicating force far more powerful than the niggardly irritation of wine or of opium. The lucidity our ideas then achieve, and the delicacy of our overly exalted sensations, produce the strangest and most unexpected effects.
- Honore de Balzac

Noble passions are like vices: the more they are satisfied, the greater they grow, Mothers and gamblers are insatiable.
- Honore de Balzac

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



Passions are no more forgiving than human laws and they reason more justly. Are they not based on a conscience of their own, infallible as an instinct?
- Honore de Balzac

The duration of a couple's passion is in proportion to the woman's original resistance or to the obstacles that social hazards have placed in the way of her happiness.
- Honore de Balzac

When passion is not fed, it changes to need. At this juncture, marriage becomes a fixed idea in the mind of the bourgeois, being the only means whereby he can win a woman and appropriate her to his uses.
- Honore de Balzac



Fountain-heads and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves!
- Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher,
The Nice Valour--Song (act III, sc. 3)

The way to avoid evil is not by maiming our passions, but by compelling them to yield their vigor to our moral nature. Thus they become, as in the ancient fable, the harnessed steeds which bear the chariot of the sun.
- Henry Ward Beecher

A genuine passion is like a mountain stream; it admits of no impediment; it cannot go backward; it must go forward.
- Christian Nestell Bovee



Passion looks not beyond the moment of its existence. Better, it says, the kisses of love to day, than the felicities of heaven afar off.
- Christian Nestell Bovee

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

As rivers, when they overflow, drown those grounds, and ruin those husbandmen, which, whilst they flowed calmly betwixt their banks, they fertilized and enriched; so our passions, when they grow exorbitant and unruly, destroy those virtues, to which they may be very serviceable whilst they keep within their bounds.
- Robert Boyle



The worst of slaves is he whom passion rules.
- Henry Brooke

Only I discern
Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn.
- Robert Browning, Two in the Campagna
(st. 12)

In solitude the passions feed upon the heart.
- Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton



The mind profits by the wrecks of every passion.
- Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

What a mistake to suppose that the passions are strongest in youth! The passions are not stronger, but the control over them is weaker! They are more easily excited, they are more violent and apparent; but they have less energy, less durability, less intense and concentrated power than in maturer life.
- Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Flowers whose wild odors breathe but agonies.
- Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)



In the human breast two master-passions cannot coexist.
- Thomas Campbell

All passions exaggerate; and they are passions only because they do exaggerate.
- Sebastien-Roch-Nicolas de Chamfort

For one heat, all know, doth drive out another,
One passion doth expel another still.
- George Chapman, Monsieur D'Olive
(act V, sc. 1, l. 8)



Were it not for the salutary agitation of the passions, the waters of life would become dull, stagnant, and as unfit for all vital purposes as those of the Dead Sea.
- Paul Chatfield (a/k/a Horace Smith)

Women are much more alike than men; they have, in truth, but two passions, vanity and love; these are their universal characteristics.
- 4th Earl of Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope

He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.
- Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero) (often called "Tully" for short)



Filled with fury, rapt, inspir'd.
- William Collins, The Passions (l. 10)

Strong as our passions are, they may be starved into submission, and conquered without being killed.
- Charles Caleb Colton

There is a holy love and a holy rage, and our best virtues never glow so brightly as when our passions are excited in the cause. Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues; and the best of us are better when roused.
- Charles Caleb Colton



Oh how the passions, insolent and strong,
Bear our weak minds their rapid course along;
Make us the madness of their will obey;
Then die and leave us to our griefs a prey!
- George Crabbe

The passions may be humored till they become our masters, as a horse may be pampered till he gets the better of his rider; but early discipline will prevent mutiny, and keep the helm in the hands of reason.
- Richard Cumberland, Bishop of Peterborough (1)

Come, come, it's only the passions that make you think.
- Madame Marie Anne du Deffand,
to Horace Walpole



We are ne'er like angels till our passion dies.
- Thomas Dekker (Decker), The Honest Whore
(pt. II, act I, sc. 2)

Steel assassinates; the passions kill.
- Dorothee DeLuzy

Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination.
- Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield



Passion is always suffering, even when gratified.
- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.
- Benjamin Franklin



Hold not conference, debate, or reasoning with any lust; 'tis but a preparatory for thy admission of it. The way is at the very first flatly to deny it.
- Thomas Fuller (1)

The passions are at once tempters and chastisers. As tempters, they come with garlands of flowers on brows of youth; as chastisers, they appear with wreaths of snakes on the forehead of deformity. They are angels of light in their delusion; they are fiends of torment in their inflictions.
- Henry Giles

Great passions are incurable diseases.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe



Passions are defects or virtues in the highest power.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The passions are like those demons with which Afrasahiab sailed down the Orus. Our only safety consists in keeping them asleep. If they we are lost.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A strong passion for any object will ensure success, for the desire of the end will point out the means.
- William Hazlitt (1)



The most common-place people become highly imaginative when they are in a passion. Whole dramas of insult, injury, and wrong pass before their minds,--efforts of creative genius, for there is sometimes not a fact to go upon.
- Sir Arthur Helps

Sudden glory is the passion which maketh those grimaces called laughter.
- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (ch. 6)

Bee to the blossom, moth to the flame;
Each to his passion; what's in a name?
- Helen Hunt Jackson (Helen Hunt),
Vanity of Vanities



Men will always act according to their passions. Therefore the best government is that which inspires the nobler passions and destroys the meaner.
- Hermann Jacobi

Even virtue itself, all perfect as it is, requires to be inspirited by passion; for duties are but coldly performed which are but philosophically fulfilled.
- Mrs. Anna Brownell Jameson

The art of governing the passions is more useful, and more important, than many things in the search and pursuit of which we spend our days. Without this art, riches and health, and skill and knowledge, will give us little satisfaction; and whatsoever else we be, we can be neither happy, nor wise, nor good.
- John Jortin



The passions should be purged; all may become innocent if they are well directed and moderated. Even hatred maybe a commendable feeling when it is caused by a lively love of good. Whatever makes the passions pure, makes them stronger, more durable, and more enjoyable.
- Joseph Joubert

We use up in the passions the stuff that was given us for happiness.
- Joseph Joubert

Feminine passion is to masculine as an epic is to an epigram.
- Karl Kraus



If we resist our passions it is more from their weakness than from our strength.
- Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld, Maxims
(no. 125)

All the passions are nothing else than different degrees of heat and cold of the blood.
[Fr., Toutes les passions ne sout autre chose que les divers degres de la chaleur et de la froideur du sang.]
- Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld,
Premier Supplement (VIII)

A great passion has no partner.
- Johann Kaspar Lavater (John Caspar Lavater)



He submits himself to be seen through a microscope, who suffers himself to be caught in a fit of passion.
- Johann Kaspar Lavater (John Caspar Lavater)

He who is passionate and hasty is generally honest. It is your cool, dissembling hypocrite of whom you should beware.
- Johann Kaspar Lavater (John Caspar Lavater)

The passions do not die out; they burn out.
- Ninon de L'Enclos (real name Anne L'Enclos)



Passions, as fire and water, are good servants, but bad masters, and subminister to the best and worst purposes.
- Sir Roger L'Estrange

Exalted souls
Have passions in proportion violent,
Resistless, and tormenting; they're a tax
Imposed by nature on pre-eminence,
And fortitude and wisdom must support them.
- George Lillo

The blossoms of passions, gay luxuriant flowers, are brighter and fuller of fragrance; but they beguile us and lead us astray, and their odor is deadly.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow



Weak minds make treaties with the passions they cannot overcome, and try to purchase happiness at the expense of principle; but the resolute will of a strong man scorns such means, and struggles nobly with his foe to achieve great deeds.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Where passion leads or prudence points the way.
- Robert Lowth (Louth),
The Choice of Hercules (1)

It is not the absence, but the mastery, of our passions which affords happiness.
- Mme. Francoise d'Aubigne de Maintenon



Passion makes us feel, but never see clearly.
- Charles de Montesquieu (Charles-Louis de Secondat)

Alas! too well,. too well they know
The pain, the penitence, the woe
That passion brings down on the best,
The wisest and the loveliest.
- Thomas Moore

Out of passions grow opinions; mental sloth lets these rigidify into convictions.
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche



The passions act as winds to propel our vessel, our reason is the pilot that steers her; without the winds she would not move, without the pilot she would be lost.
- Old French Saying

When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted.
- Thomas Paine

When the passions become masters, they are vices.
- Blaise Pascal



Passion may not unfitly be termed the mob of the man, that commits a riot upon his reason.
- William Penn

The difference between passion and love is that this is fixed, that volatile. Love grows, passion wastes, by enjoyment; and the reason is that one springs from a union of souls, and the other springs from a union of sense.
- William Penn

One master-passion in the breast,
Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest.
- 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

The ruling passion conquers reason still.
- Alexander Pope

Search then the ruling passion; there alone,
The wild are constant, and the cunning known;
The fool consistent, and the false sincere;
Priests, princes, women, no dissemblers here.
- Alexander Pope, Moral Essays
(ep. I, l. 174)



In men, we various ruling passions find;
In women two almost divide the kind;
Those only fix'd, they first or last obey.
The love of pleasure, and the love of sway.
- Alexander Pope, Moral Essays
(ep. II, l. 207)

The ruling passion, be it what it will,
The ruling passion conquers reason still.
- Alexander Pope, Moral Essays
(ep. III, l. 153)

May I govern my passions with absolute sway,
And grow wiser and better as my strength wears away.
- Walter Pope, The Old Man's Wish



Govern your passions, or they will govern you.
- Proverb, (Latin)

The mind hath not reason to remember that passions ought to be her vassals, not her masters.
- Sir Walter Raleigh (1)

Passions are likened best to floods and streams,
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.
- Sir Walter Raleigh (1), The Silent Lover



Passions are like storms which, full of present mischief, serve to purify the atmosphere.
- Andrew Michael Ramsay (Chevalier de Ramsay)

The passions are the voice of the body.
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Rage is the shortest passion of our souls,
Like narrow brooks that rise with sudden showers,
It swells in haste, and falls again as soon.
Still as it ebbs, the softer thoughts flow in,
And the deceiver, love, supplies its place.
- Nicholas Rowe



His soul, like bark with rudder lost,
On passion's changeful tide was tost;
Nor vice nor virtue had the power
Beyond th' impression of the hour;
And O, when passion rules, how rare
The hours that fall to virtue's share!
- Sir Walter Scott

Let the sap of reason quench the fire of passion.
- William Shakespeare

Passion makes the will lord of the reason.
- William Shakespeare



Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.
- William Shakespeare,
Hamlet Prince of Denmark
(Hamlet at III, ii)

What to ourselves in passion we propose,
The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
- William Shakespeare,
Hamlet Prince of Denmark
(Claudius, King of Denmark at III, ii)

Alas, why gnaw you so your nether lip?
Some bloody passion shakes your very frame.
These are portents; but yet I hope, I hope,
They do not point on me.
- William Shakespeare,
Othello the Moor of Venice
(Desdemona at V, ii)



O that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth!
Then with passion would I shake the world,
And rouse from sleep that fell anatomy
Which cannot hear a lady's feeble voice,
Which scorns a modern invocation.
- William Shakespeare,
The Life and Death of King John
(Constance at III, iv)

Passion is the drunkenness of the mind.
- Bishop Robert South

Words may be counterfeit, false coined, and current only from the tongue, without the mind; but passion is in the soul, and always speaks the heart.
- Thomas Southerne (Southern)



Passion is the great mover and spring of the soul. When men's passions are strongest, they may have great and noble effects; but they are then also apt to fall into the greatest miscarriages.
- Thomas Sprat

Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for the time, leave us the weaker ever after.
- Jonathan Swift,
often attributed to Alexander Pope

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.
- Lord Alfred Tennyson, Locksley Hall
(st. 25)



The passions are the winds which fill the sails of the vessel; they sink it at times, but without them it would be impossible to make way. Bile makes man passionate and sick; but without bile man could not live.
- Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire)

The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er;
So calm are we when passions are no more!
- Edmund Waller, On Divine Poems (l. 7)

Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.
- Oscar Wilde (Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde),
The Picture of Dorian Gray



True passion is not a wisp light; it is a consuming flame, and either it must find fruition or it will burn the human heart to dust and ashes.
- William Winter

And beauty, for confiding youth,
Those shocks of passion can prepare
That kill the bloom before its time,
And blanch, without the owner's crime,
The most resplendent hair.
- William Wordsworth,
Lament of Mary, Queen of Scots

When reason, like the skilful charioteer,
Can break the fiery passions to the bit,
And, spite of their licentious sallies, keep
The radiant tract of glory; passions, then,
Are aids and ornaments. Triumphant reason,
Firm in her seat, and swift in her career,
Enjoys their violence, and, smiling, thanks
Their formidable flame, for bright renown.
- Edward Young