Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Passion

"As iron is eaten away by rust, so the envious are consumed by their own passion." - Antisthenes NULL

"In the same degree in which a man’s mind is nearer to freedom from all passion, in the same degree also is it nearer to strength." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

"We must learn that competence is better than extravagance, that worth is better than wealth, that the golden calf we have worshipped has no more brains than that one of old which the Hebrews worshipped. So beware of money and money’s worth as the supreme passion of the mind. Beware of the craving for enormous acquisition." -

"There is no passion so distressing as fear, which gives us great pain and makes us appear contemptible in our own eyes to the last degree. Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency." - James Boswell

"Passion looks not beyond the moment of its existence." - Christian Nestell Bovee

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

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

"Nowhere are prejudices more mistaken for truth, passion for reason, and invective for documentation than in politics. That is a realm, peopled only by villains or heroes, in which everything is black or white and gray is a forbidden color." -

"Patience and time do more than strength or passion." - Jean de La Bruyère

"The strongest passion is fear." - Jean de La Bruyère

"The more discussion the better, if passion and personality be eschewed; and discussion, even if stormy, often winnows truth from error - a good never to be expected in an uninquiring age." - William Ellery Channing

"Anger is the most impotent passion that accompanies the mind of man; it effects nothing it goes about; and hurts the man who is possessed by it more directly than any other against whom it is directed." - Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, aka Lord Clarendon

"The astonishing thing about him [man] is his range of vision; his gaze into the infinite distance; his lonely passion for ideas and ideals, far removed from his material surroundings and animal activities, and in no way suggested by them, yet for which, such is his affection, he is willing to endure toils and privations, to sacrifice pleasures, to disdain griefs and frustrations. The inner truth is that every man is himself a creator, by birth and nature, an artist, an architect and fashioner of worlds." - W. Macneile Dixon, fully William Macneile Dixon

"The first impulse of conscience is apt to be right; the first impulse of appetite or passion is generally wrong. We should be faithful to the former, but suspicious of the latter." - Tyron Edwards

"Passion overcometh sober thought; and this is cause of direst ills to men." - Euripedes NULL

"It often falls out, that the end of passion is the beginning of repentance." - Owen Feltham

"The passion of acquiring riches in order to support a vain expense corrupts the purest souls." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

"If Passion drives, let Reason hold the Reins." - Benjamin Franklin

"Shun fear, it is the ague of the soul! a passion man created for himself - for sure that cramp of nature could not dwell in the warm realms of glory." - Aaron Hill

"Nirvana is interpreted by Western nations as the actual annihilation of human desire or passion; but this is a mistake. Nirvana is nothing else than universal reason." - Kinza M. Hirai, fully Kinza Ringe M. Hirai

"An infallible way to make your child miserable is to satisfy all his demands. Passion swells by gratification; and the impossibility of satisfying every one of his wishes will oblige you to stop short at last after he has become headstrong." - Henry Home, Lord Kames

"Nothing so uncertain as general reputation. A man injures me from humor, passion, or interest; hates me because he has injured me; and speaks ill of me because he hates me." - Henry Home, Lord Kames

"Resentment is, in every stage of the passion, painful, but it is not disagreeable, unless in excess; pity is always painful, yet always agreeable; vanity, on the contrary, is always pleasant, yet always disagreeable." - Henry Home, Lord Kames

"Ridicule, which chiefly arises from pride, a selfish passion, is but at best a gross pleasure, too rough an entertainment for those who are highly polished and refined." - Henry Home, Lord Kames

"Passion will master you, if you do not master your passion." - William Hone

"Anger is a momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you." - Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

"He who will not curb his passion, will wish that undone which his grief and resentment suggested, while he violently plies his revenge with unsated rancor. Rage is a short madness. Rule your passion, which commands, if it do not obey; do not restrain it with a bridle, and with fetters." - Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

"All men are good when free from passion, interest, or error." -

"Delicacy of taste has the same effect as delicacy of passion; it enlarges the sphere both of our happiness and misery, and makes us sensible to pain as well as pleasures, which escape the rest of mankind." - David Hume

"It is a certain rule that wit and passion are entirely incompatible. When the affections are moved, there is no place for the imagination." - David Hume

"Jealousy is a painful passion; yet without some share of it, the agreeable affection of love has difficulty to subsist in its full force and violence." - David Hume

"Nothing can oppose or retard the impulse of passion... 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

"The greater part of mankind are naturally apt to be affirmative and dogmatical in their opinions; and while they see objects only on one side, and have no idea of any counterpoising argument, they throw themselves precipitately into the principles, to which they are inclined; nor have they any indulgence for those who entertain opposite sentiments. To hesitate or balance perplexes their understanding, checks their passion, and suspends their action." - David Hume

"The only difference betwixt the natural vices and justice lies in this, that the good, which results from the former, arises from every single act, and is the object of some natural passion: whereas a single act of justice, consider’d in itself, may often be contrary to the public good; and ‘tis only the concurrence of mankind, in a general scheme or system of action, which is advantageous." - David Hume

"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." - Anna Jameson

"Resentment is a union of sorrow with malignity; a combination of a passion which all endeavor to avoid with a passion which all concur to detest." -

"Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance, of justice; injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged." -

"Faith is the highest passion in a man. There are perhaps many in every generation who do not even reach it, but no one gets further." - Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

"One should not think slightly of the paradoxical; for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a love without feeling... The supreme paradox of all thought is the attempt to discover something that thought cannot think." - Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

"Without risk there is no faith. Faith is precisely the contradiction between the infinite passion of the individual’s inwardness and the objective uncertainty. If I am capable of grasping god objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe. If I wish to preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast to the objective uncertainty, so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water, still preserving my faith." - Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

"A great passion has no partner." - Johann Kaspar Lavater

"The most stormy ebullitions of passion, from blasphemy to murder, are less terrific than one single act of cool villainy; a still rabies is more dangerous than the paroxysms of a fever. Fear the boisterous savage of passion less than the sedately grinning villain." - Johann Kaspar Lavater

"We may say that we are immune from bondage in so far as we act with a distinct knowledge, but that we are the slaves of passion in so far as our perception are confused... In truth we will only that which pleases us: but unhappily what pleases us now is often a real evil, which would displease us if we had the eyes of understanding open." -

"Endurance is the crowning quality, and patience all the passion of great hearts." - James Russell Lowell

"It is a true observation of ancient writers, that as men are apt to be cast down by adversity, so they are easily satiated with prosperity, and that joy and grief produce the same effects. For whenever men are not obliged by necessity to fight they fight from ambition, which is so powerful a passion in the human breast that however high we reach we are never satisfied." - Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

"Temperance is the excellence of the will in controlling the passion for pleasure." -

"The passion for truth has underlying it a profound conviction that what is real is best; that when we get to the heart of things we shall find there what we most need." - George S. Merriam

"Age, when it does not harden the heart and sour the temper, naturally returns to the milky disposition of infancy. Time as the same effect upon the mind as on the face. The predominant passion, the strongest feature, becomes more conspicuous from the others retiring." - Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

"There is no passion that so much transports men from their right judgments as anger. No one would demur upon punishing a judge with death who should condemn a criminal upon the account of his own choler; why then should fathers and pedants be any more allowed to whip and chastise children in their anger? It is then no longer correction but revenge. Chastisement is instead of physic to children; an should we suffer a physician who should be animated against and enraged at his patient?" - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"Reason is God's gift, but so are the passions. Reason is as guilty as passion." -