Passion quotes
5.8K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside passion — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"It's lonely to listen to the pleasure of others, not that I've made a habit of that kind of eavesdropping. There's joy and passion in the next room, in the next bed, but it's not yours."
"I feel that when you have a passion and you are real, you last throughout the ages and you're able to reincarnate your artistry numerous times."
"Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination."
"Nothing more powerfully excites any affection than to conceal some part of its object, by throwing it into a kind of shade, whichat the same time that it shows enough to prepossess us in favour of the object, leaves still some work for the imagination."
"Avarice, the spur of industry, is so obstinate a passion, and works its way through so many real dangers and difficulties, that it is not likely to be scared by an imaginary danger, which is so small, that it scarcely admits of calculation. Commerce, therefore, in my opinion, is apt to decay in absolute governments, not because it is there less secure, but because it is less honourable."
"Friendship is a calm and sedate affection, conducted by reason and cemented by habit; springing from long acquaintance and mutual obligations, without jealousies or fears, and without those feverish fits of heat and cold, which cause such an agreeable torment in the amorous passion."
"The great charm of poetry consists in lively pictures of the sublime passions, magnanimity, courage, disdain of fortune; or thoseof the tender affections, love and friendship; which warm the heart, and diffuse over it similar sentiments and emotions."
"Where ambition can cover its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of passions"
"Only passions, and great passions, can raise the soul to great things. Without them there is no sublimity, either in morals or in creativity. Art returns to infancy, and virtue becomes small-minded."
"A passion for life is one of the most attractive qualities in a human being. If you want a teammate or a life mate who loves to be around you, all you need to do is love to be around."
"Are some people destined for a great fate, or to do great things? Or is it only that they're born somehow with that great passion - and if they find themselves in the right circumstances, then things happen? It's the sort of thing you wonder."
"I committed crimes of passion and my soul was suspected, But it was thrown out of court because of course the Creator and I connected. He told me, "Fear not for thou art protected. Your life is being requested."
"Feeling alone guides the mind."
"That’s when I first learned that it wasn’t enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it, even a passion for it."
"For me, and for thousands with similar inclinations, the most important passion of life is the overpowering desire to escape periodically from the clutches of a mechanistic civilization. To us the enjoyment of solitude, complete independence, and the beauty of undefiled panoramas is absolutely essential to happiness."
"Truth is not a virtue, but a passion. It is never charitable."
"There exists a passion for comprehension, just as there exists a passion for music. That passion is rather common in children, but gets lost in most people later on. Without this passion there would be neither mathematics nor natural science."
"Every civilization is, among other things, an arrangement for domesticating the passions and setting them to do useful work."
"I am inclined to agree with the Head Master of Eton that pæderastic passions among schoolboys 'do no harm'; further, I think them the only redeeming feature of sexual life at public schools."
"I gave everything I had to basketball. The passion is still there but the desire to play is not. It was a great ride."
