This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"What grief is not taken away by time? What passion will survive an unequal battle with it? I knew a man in the bloom of his still youthful powers, filled with true nobility and virtue, I knew him when he was in love, tenderly, passionately, furiously, boldly, modestly, and before me, almost before my eyes, the object of his passion - tender, beautiful as an angel - was struck down by insatiable death. I never saw such terrible fits of inner suffering, such furious scorching anguish, such devouring despair as shook the unfortunate lover. I never thought a man could create such a hell for himself, in which there would be no shadow, no image, nothing in the least resembling hope" - Nikolai Gogol, fully Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol or Nikolay Vasilyevich Gogol
"Of all things I liked books best. My father had a large library and whenever I could manage I tried to satisfy my passion for reading. He did not permit it and would fly in a rage when he caught me in the act. He hid the candles when he found that I was reading in secret. He did not want me to spoil my eyes. But I obtained tallow, made the wicking and cast the sticks into tin forms, and every night I would bush the keyhole and the cracks and read, often till dawn." - Nikola Tesla
"You cannot eat respectability, and you cannot eat money, and you cannot eat prestige. They are just games: meaningless, stupid, mediocre. if you are intelligent enough you will understand that you have to live your life and you are not to bother about other things. All other considerations are meaningless: it is your life. You have to live it authentically, lovingly, with great passion and with great compassion, with great energy. You have to become a tidal wave of bliss." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
"That’s what spirituality is really all about: to live death intensely, to live life intensely; to live both so passionately that nothing is left behind unlived, not even death. If you live life and death totally, you transcend. In that tremendous passion and intensity of life and death, you transcend duality, you transcend the dichotomy, you come to the One. That One is really the truth. You can call it God, you can call it life, you can call it truth, samadhi, ecstasy, or whatsoever you choose." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
"This had been the higher, diviner way which she had missed, this obligation from the passion of the past which she had left unfulfilled, unaccepted. " - Ouida, pseudonym of Maria Louise Ramé, preferred to be called Marie Louise de la Ramée NULL
"The end of passion is the beginning of repentance." - Owen Feltham
"Fear is the passion of slaves. " - Patrick Henry
"The passion for truth is silenced by answers which have the weight of undisputed authority." - Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich
"No one should let themselves get used to anything… No one wants their life thrown into chaos at all. That's why many people holding back the threat level under control, and that's the way they are able to prop up a house or structure has rotted. They are the architects of innovation. Others think the opposite: they surrender themselves without a second thought; they hope to find in the passion that the method solves all their problems. They force people to take responsibility for their happiness, and blame those people because they were not happy. They are in an excited state because of the magic has happened or depressed because things just do not expect the destruction of all. Alkali keep the passion, or surrender it blindly-way, less destructive The most extreme? I do not know. " - Paulo Coelho
"Only children believe they're capable of everything… Opportunities multiply as they are seized… Other people think exactly the opposite: they surrender themselves without a second thought, hoping to find in passion the solutions to all their problems. They make the other person responsible for their happiness and blame them for their possible unhappiness. They are either euphoric because something marvelous has happened or depressed because something unexpected has just ruined everything… Nothing in the world is ever completely wrong. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day… Nothing in this world happens by chance… Nothing will behave in the logical way you have come to expect." - Paulo Coelho
"While mission is foundational, it is also insufficient because, by its nature, it is extraordinarily difficult to assess how we are doing by looking only at the mission. For this we need to stick our necks out and articulate "an image of the future we seek to create." Results-oriented leaders, therefore, must have both a mission and a vision. Results mean little without purpose, for a very practical and powerful reason: a mission instills both the passion and the patience for the long journey. While vision inspires passion, many failed ventures are characterized by passion without patience." - Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge
"The hero is the world-man, in whose heart one passion stands for all, the most indulged." - Philip James Bailey
"Under the pretext of study we spent our hours in the happiness of love, and learning held out to us the secret opportunities that our passion craved. Our speech was more of love than of the books which lay open before us; our kisses far outnumbered our reasoned words." - Pierre Abelard, aka Abailard or Abaelard or Habalaarz
"It's not at all uncommon to find a person's desires compelling him to go against his reason, and to see him cursing himself and venting his passion on the source of the compulsion within him. It's as if there were two warring factions, with passion fighting on the side of reason. But I'm sure you won't claim that you had ever, in yourself or in anyone else, met a case of passion siding with his desires against the rational mind, when the rational mind prohibits resistance. " - Plato NULL
"Then may we not fairly plead in reply that our true lover of knowledge naturally strives for truth, and is not content with common opinion, but soars with undimmed and unwearied passion till he grasps the essential nature of things with the mental faculty fitted to do so, that is, with the faculty which is akin to reality, and which approaches and unites with it, and begets intelligence and truth as children, and is only released from travail when it has thus reached knowledge and true life and satisfaction? " - Plato NULL
"Passivity, thus, implies the existence within of a motion functioning somehow or other in the direction of alteration. Action too implies motion within, whether the motion be aimless or whether it be driven by the impulse comported by the term Action to find its goal in an external object. There is Motion in both Action and Passion, but the differentia distinguishing Action from Passion keeps Action impassive, while Passion is recognized by the fact that a new state replaces the old, though nothing is added to the essential character of the patient; whenever Being [essential Being] is produced, the patient remains distinct." - Plotinus NULL
"In suffocating the voice of conscience, passion carries with itself a restlessness of the body and the senses: it is the restlessness of the external man. When the internal man has been reduced to silence, then passion, once it has been given freedom of action, so to speak, exhibits itself as an insistent tendency to satisfy the senses and the body. " - Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
"If you have passion for what you do, the company you keep, the life you live, it will be reflected in whatever you create. Passion is like that; it springs out, jumps, unpredictable and unplanned, into everything we touch. If it doesn't, others know. Passion can't be faked and it can't be manufactured. Which is why it is so priceless." - R. D. Laing, fully Ronald David Laing
"It is a great thing for a person to still have an evil inclination because then he is able to serve Hashem with the evil inclination itself. That is, to take all of the fire in his heart and channel it towards service of Hashem. For example, to pray with fiery passion of the heart, etc. For, if there is no evil inclination in a person his service cannot be complete. " - Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav or Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Nachman from Uman NULL
"Since the evil forces see that the Jewish people are very, very close to the end (to the messiah), and there are Jews nowadays who have tremendous yearning and passion for spirituality and godliness, such a thing that has never occurred in past generations, so the evil forces enter arguments between the tzaddikim, and they establish in the world many false leaders, and even between true tzaddikim the evil forces cause great arguments, until no one knows where truth can be found. Therefore, a person needs to plead very much from Hashem to merit to recognize and come close to the true Tzaddik. " - Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav or Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Nachman from Uman NULL
"He who raises his hand against his fellow in passion is a sinner." - Rabbinical Proverbs
"One who gives way to passion is as bad as an idolater." - Rabbinical Proverbs
"Suddenly, from all the green around you, something-you don't know what-has disappeared; you feel it creeping closer to the window, in total silence. From the nearby wood you hear the urgent whistling of a plover, reminding you of someone's Saint Jerome: so much solitude and passion come from that one voice, whose fierce request the downpour will grant. The walls, with their ancient portraits, glide away from us, cautiously, as though they weren't supposed to hear what we are saying. And reflected on the faded tapestries now; the chill, uncertain sunlight of those long childhood hours when you were so afraid." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
"If intellection and knowledge were mere passion from without, or the bare reception of extraneous and adventitious forms, then no reason could be given at all why a mirror or looking-glass should not understand; whereas it cannot so much as sensibly perceive those images which it receives and reflects to us." - Ralph Cudworth
"Knowledge is not a passion from without the mind, but an active exertion of the inward strength, vigor and power of the mind, displaying itself from within." - Ralph Cudworth
"It is not the things we do in life that we regret on our death bed. It is the things we do not. I assure you I've done a lot of really stupid things, and none of them bother me. All the mistakes, and all the dopey things, and all the times I was embarrassed — they don't matter. What matters is that I can kind of look back and say: Pretty much any time I got chance to do something cool I tried to grab for it — and that's where my solace comes from. " - Randy Pausch, fully Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch
"You will not find your passion in things and you will not find your passion in money. The more things and the more money you have, the more you will look around and use that as the metric and there will be someone with more." - Randy Pausch, fully Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch
"Your passion must come from the things that fuel you from the inside. Honors and awards are nice things, but only to the extent that they regard the real respect from your peers." - Randy Pausch, fully Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch
"The word love was sublime childishness. And, whatever the passion I feel in the sequel, never not be possible emotion of seeing a lovely girl of nineteen crying because she is too old." - Raymond Radiguet
"We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization. We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about a particular degree of interest and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimatized." - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
"It is proper I should desire you particularly to distinguish between the love of our country and that spirit of rivalship and ambition which has been common among nations. What has the love of their country hitherto been among mankind? What has it been but a love of domination; a desire of conquest, and a thirst for grandeur and glory, by extending territory, and enslaving surrounding countries? What has it been but a blind and narrow principle, producing in every country a contempt of other countries, and forming men into combinations and factions against their common rights and liberties? This is the principle that has been too often cried up as a virtue of the first rank: a principle of the same kind with that which governs clans of Indians, or tribes of Arabs, and leads them out to plunder and massacre. As most of the evils which have taken place in private life, and among individuals, have been occasioned by the desire of private interest overcoming the public affections; so most of the evils which have taken place among bodies of men have been occasioned by the desire of their own interest overcoming the principle of universal benevolence: and leading them to attack one another’s territories, to encroach on one another’s rights, and to endeavor to build their own advancement on the degradation of all within the reach of their power? What was the love of their country among the Jews, but a wretched partiality to themselves, and a proud contempt of all other nations? What was the love of their country among the old Romans? We have heard much of it; but I cannot hesitate in saying that, however great it appeared in some of its exertions, it was, in general, no better than a principle holding together a band of robbers in their attempts to crush all liberty but their own. What is now the love of his country in a Spaniard, a Turk, or a Russian? Can it be considered as anything better than a passion for slavery, or a blind attachment to a spot where he enjoys no rights, and is disposed of as if he was a beast?" - Richard Price
"The mission of the playwright is to look in his heart and write, to write whatever concerns him at the moment; to write with passion and conviction. Of course the measure of the man will be the measure of the play." - Robert Anderson, fully Robert Woodruff Anderson
"Explaining is a difficult art. You can explain something so that your reader understands the words; and you can explain something so that the reader feels it in the marrow of his bones. To do the latter, it sometimes isn't enough to lay the evidence before the reader in a dispassionate way. You have to become an advocate and use the tricks of the advocate's trade. This book is not a dispassionate scientific treatise. Other books on Darwinism are, and many of them are excellent and informative and should be read in conjunction with this one. Far from being dispassionate, it has to be confessed that in parts this book is written with a passion which, in a professional scientific journal, might excite comment. Certainly it seeks to inform, but it also seeks to persuade and even - one can specify aims without presumption - to inspire. I want to inspire the reader with a vision of our own existence as, on the face of it, a spine-chilling mystery; and simultaneously to convey the full excitement of the fact that it is a mystery with an elegant solution which is within our grasp. More, I want to persuade the reader, not just that the Darwinian world-view happens to be true, but that it is the only known theory that could, in principle, solve the mystery of our existence. This makes it a doubly satisfying theory. A good case can be made that Darwinism is true, not just on this planet but all over the universe, wherever life may be found." - Richard Dawkins
"The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is quite finite." - Richard Dawkins
"Not in books only, nor yet in oral discourse, but often also in words there are boundless stores of moral and historic truth, and no less of passion and imagination laid up, from which lessons of infinite worth may be derived." - Richard Whately
"There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy." - Richard Brinsley Sheridan
"Americans admire a people who can scratch a desert and produce a garden. The Israelis have shown qualities that Americans identify with: guts, patriotism, idealism, a passion for freedom. I have seen it. I know. I believe that." - Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
"Art is moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television." - Rita Mae Brown
"Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda and entertainment without moral passion is television." - Rita Mae Brown
"Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it." - Robertson Davies
"Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last." - Robertson Davies
"If we seek the pleasures of love, passion should be occasional and common sense continual." - Robertson Davies
"The pleasures of love are for those who are hopelessly addicted to another living creature. The reasons for such addiction are so many that I suspect they are never the same in any two cases. It includes passion but does not survive by passion; it has its whiffs of the agreeable vertigo of young love, but it is stable more often than dizzy; it is a growing, changing thing, and it is tactful enough to give the addicted parties occasional rests from strong and exhausting feeling of any kind." - Robertson Davies
"Exalt your passion by directing and settling it upon an object the due con-templation of whose loveliness may cure perfectly all hurts received from mortal beauty." - Robert Boyle
"'Tis the beginning of hell in this life, and a passion not to be excused. Every other sin hath some pleasure annexed to it, or will admit of an excuse: envy alone wants both." - Robert Burton
"Putting in the Seed - Slave to a springtime passion for the earth. How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed On through the watching for that early birth When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed, The sturdy seedling with arched body comes Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs. " - Robert Frost
"Let poets piece prismatic words, Give me the jewelled joy of birds! What ecstasy moves them to sing? Is it the lyric glee of Spring, The dewy rapture of the rose? Is it the worship born in those Who are of Nature's self a part, The adoration of the heart? Is it the mating mood in them That makes each crystal note a gem? Oh mocking bird and nightingale, Oh mavis, lark and robin - hail! Tell me what perfect passion glows In your inspired arpeggios? A thrush is thrilling as I write Its obligato of delight; And in its fervour, as in mine, I fathom tenderness divine, And pity those of earthy ear Who cannot hear . . . who cannot hear. Let poets pattern pretty words: For lovely largesse - bless you, Birds!" - Robert Service, fully Robert William Service
"Here lie men who loved America because their ancestors generations ago helped in her founding. And other men who loved her with equal passion because they themselves or their own fathers escaped from oppression to her blessed shores. Here lie officers and men, Negroes and Whites, rich men and poor, together. Here are Protestants, Catholics, and Jews together. Here no man prefers another because of his faith or despises him because of his color. Here there are no quotas of how many from each group are admitted or allowed. Among these men there is no discrimination. No prejudices. No hatred. Theirs is the highest and purest democracy... Whosoever of us lifts his hand in hate against a brother, or who thinks himself superior to those who happen to be in the minority, makes of this ceremony and the bloody sacrifice it commemorates, an empty, hollow mockery. To this then, as our solemn sacred duty, do we the living now dedicate ourselves: To the right of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, of White men and Negroes alike, to enjoy the democracy for which all of them have here paid the price... We here solemnly swear this shall not be in vain. Out of this and from the suffering and sorrow of those who mourn this, will come, we promise, the birth of a new freedom for the sons of men everywhere." - Roland B. Gittelsohn, fully Roland Bertram Gittelsohn
"THE MESSIAH - Lord, tell me when Shall come to men Messiah blest, When shall Thy care His couch prepare To be my guest, To sleep on my golden bed, in my palace rest. Wake, dear gazelle, Shake off thy spell, Nor slumber still. Dawn like a flag Surmounts the crag Of Tabor’s hill, And its flame it unfurls o’er my Hermon, the hoar and chill. From the wild-ass brood To the grace renewed Of Thy dainty roe, O Lord, return, For behold we yearn Our love to show, And our soul with Thy soul at one as of yore to know. Thrice welcome he Who comes to me Of David’s line, My palace treasure Is at his pleasure With all that’s mine, My pomegranate, cinnamon, spice, and the jars of my old sweet wine." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron