|
PASSIOn quotes
Passion costs me too much to bestow it on every trifle.
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 that bear the chariot of the sun.
Passion looks not beyond the moment of its existence.—Better, it says; the kisses of love today, than the felicities of heaven afar off.
The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.
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 might be very serviceable whilst kept within their bounds.
The worst of slaves is he whom passion rules.
In all disputes, so much as there is of passion, so much there is of nothing to the purpose; for then reason, like a bad hound, spends upon a false scent, and forsakes the question first started.
It is the excess and not the nature of our passions which is perishable. Like the trees which grow by the tomb of Protesilaus, the passions flourish till they reach a certain height, but no sooner is that height attained than they wither away.
In the history of the passions each human heart is a world in itself; its experience can profit no others.
"All the passions," says an old writer, "are such near neighbors, that if one of them is on fire the others should send for the buckets." Thus love and hate being both passions, the one is never safe from the spark that sets the other ablaze.
In strong natures, if resistance to temptation is of granite, so the passions that they admit are of fire.
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.
A vigorous mind is as necessarily accompanied with violent passions as a great fire with great heat.
In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish; and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold masterly hand, touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies whenever we oppress and persecute.
The passions and desires, like the two twists of a rope, mutually mix one with the other, and twine inextricably round the heart; producing good, if moderately indulged; but certain destruction, if suffered to become inordinate.
The passions and capacities of our nature are foundations of power, happiness and glory; but if we turn them into occasions and sources of self-indulgence, the structure itself falls, and buries everything in its overwhelming desolation.
Almost all men are born with every passion to some extent, but there is hardly a man who has not a dominant passion to which the others are subordinate. Discover this governing passion in every individual; and when you have found the master passion of a man, remember never to trust to him where that passion is concerned.
He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.
What profits us, that we from heaven derive a soul immortal, and with looks erect survey the stars, if, like the brutal kind, we follow where our passions lead the way?
Princes rule the people; and their own passions rule princes; but Providence can overrule the whole, and draw the instruments of his inscrutable purpose from the vices, no less than from the virtues of kings.
Our headstrong passions shut the door of our souls against God.
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!
People have a custom of excusing the enormities of their conduct by talking of their passions, as if they were under the control of a blind necessity, and sinned because they could not help it.
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.
There are moments when our passions speak and decide for us, and we seem to stand by and wonder. They carry in them an inspiration of crime, that in one instant does the work of long premeditation.
Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.
Chastise your passions, that they may not chastise you. No one who is a lover of money, of pleasure, or of glory, is likewise a lover of mankind. Riches are not among the number of things that are good. It is not poverty that causes sorrow, but covetous desires. Deliver yourself from appetite, and you will be free. He who is discontented with things present and allotted, is unskilled in life.
It is the passions of men that both do and undo everything.—They are the winds that are necessary to put every thing in motion, though they often cause storms.
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.
The passions are at once tempters and hastisers. 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.
The passions are like those demons with which Afrasahiab sailed down the Orus. Our only safety consists in keeping them asleep. If they wake, we are lost.
The passions are unruly cattle, and therefore you must keep them chained up, and under the government of religion, reason and prudence. If thus kept under discipline, they are useful servants; but if you let them loose and give them head, they will be your masters, and unruly masters, and carry you, like wild and unbridled horses, into a thousand mischiefs and inconveniences, besides the great disturbance, disorder and discomposure they will occasion in your own mind.
Nothing doth so fool a man as extreme passion. This doth make them fools which otherwise are not, and show them to be fools which are so.
Many persons in reasoning on the passions, make a continual appeal to commonsense. But passion is without commonsense, and we must frequently discard the one in speaking of the other.
It is the strong passions which, rescuing us from sloth, can alone impart to us that continuous and earnest attention necessary to great intellectual effort.
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.
Men are not blindly betrayed into corruption, but abandon themselves to their passions with their eyes open; and lose the direction of truth, because they do not attend to her voice, not because they do not understand it.
Passion, in its first violence, controls interest, as the eddy for a while runs against the stream.
Happy is he who is engaged in controversy with his own passions, and comes off superior; who makes it his endeavor that his follies and weaknesses may die before himself, and who daily meditates on mortality and immortality.
We use up in our passions the stuff that was given us for happiness.
The passions should be purged; all may become innocent if they are well directed and moderated. Even hatred may be a commendable feeling when it is caused by a lively love of good. Whatever makes the passions purer makes them stronger, more durable, and mere enjoyable.
He submits to be seen through a microscope, who suffers himself to be caught in a fit of passion.
Exalted souls, have passions in proportion violent, resistless, and tormenting: they're a tax imposed by nature on preeminence, and fortitude and wisdom must support them.
The blossoms of passion, gay and luxuriant flowers, are bright and full of fragrance, but they beguile us and lead us astray, and their odor is deadly.
Passions makes us feel, but never see clearly.
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.
A wise man's heart is like a broad hearth that keeps the coals from burning the house. Good deeds in this life are coals raked up in embers, to make a fire next day.
Passion may not unfitly be termed the mob of the man, that commits a riot on his reason.
The passionate are like men standing on their heads; they see all things the wrong way.
The ruling passion, be it what it will, the ruling passion, conquers reason still.
May I govern my passions with absolute sway, and grow wiser and better as life wears away.
All passions are good or bad, according to their objects: where the object is absolutely good, there the greatest passion is too little; where absolutely evil, there the least passion is too much; where indifferent, there a little is enough.
Passions are likened best to floods and reams: the shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.
The only praiseworthy indifference is an acquired one; we must feel as well as control our passions.
Passion often makes fools of the ablest men, and able men of the mow foolish.
The passions are the only orators who never fail to persuade.—They are nature's art of eloquence, the rules of which never fail; and the weakest man, moved by passion, is more eloquent than the strongest who has none.
If we resist our passions, it is more through their weakness than from our strength.
The passions often engender their contraries.—Avarice sometimes produces prodigality, and prodigality, avarice; we are often resolute from weakness, and daring from timidity.
The passions of mankind are partly protective, partly beneficent, like the chaff and grain of the corn, but none without their use, none without nobleness when seen in balanced unity with the rest of the spirit which they are charged to defend.
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.
When passion rules, how rare the hours that fall to virtue's share.
A man is by nothing so much himself, as by his temper and the character of his passions and affections. If he loses what is manly and worthy in these, he is as much lost to himself, as when he loses his memory and understanding.
The mind by passion driven from its firm hold, becomes a feather to each wind that blows.
The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps over a cold decree.
Give me that man that is not passion's slave, and I will wear him in my heart's core, aye, in my heart of hearts.
Passion makes the will lord of the reason.
Strong passions are the life of manly virtues. But they need not necessarily be evil because they are passions, and because they are strong. They may be likened to blood horses, that need training and the curb only, to enable those whom they carry to achieve the most glorious triumphs.
Passion is the drunkenness of the mind.
Sprat, Thomas
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.
Men spend their lives in the service of their passions, instead of employing their passions in the service of their life.
Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for the time, leave us the weaker ever after.
The way to conquer men, is by their passions; catch but the ruling foible of their hearts, and all their boasted virtues shrink before you.
The passions are the winds that fill the sails of the vessel.—They sink it at times; but without them it would be impossible to make way.—Many things that are dangerous here below, are still necessary.
|
