Great Throughts Treasury

"A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation." - Eric Hoffer

"The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in which the idea is overcome. De Tocqueville points out that it is at times when passions start to govern human affairs that ideas are most obviously translated into political action. The translation of ideas into action is usually in the hands of people least likely to follow rational motives. Hence, it is that action is often the nemesis of ideas, and sometimes of the men who formulate them. One of the marks of the truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action - the ability to pass directly from thought to action." - Eric Hoffer

"Truth is passion. One cannot learn it; one must possess it." - Ernst Toller

"There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life." - Federico Fellini

"Men fear death, as children fear the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by frightful tales, so is the other. Groans, convulsions, weeping friends, and the like show death terrible; yet there is no passion so weak but conquers the fear of it, and therefore death is not such a terrible enemy. Revenge triumphs over death, loves slights its, honor aspires to it, dread of shame prefers it, grief flies to it, and fear anticipates it." - Francis Bacon

"There is no passion in the mind of man so weak but it mates and masters the fear of death." - Francis Bacon

"Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

"We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

"There is only one universal passion: fear." - George Bernard Shaw

"No indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness." - George MacDonald

"Love is but a prelude to life, an overture in which the theme of the impending work is exquisitely hinted at, but which remains nevertheless only a symbol and a promise. What is to follow, if all goes well, begins presently to appear. Passion settles down into possession, courtship into partnership, pleasure into habit. A child, half mystery and half plaything, comes to show us what we have done and to make its consequences perpetual. We see that by indulging our inclination we have woven about us a net from which we cannot escape: our choices, bearing fruit, begin to manifest our destiny. That life which once seemed to spread out infinitely before us is narrowed to one mortal career. We learn that in morals the infinite is a chimera, and that in accomplishing anything definite a man renounces everything else. He sails henceforth for one point of the compass." - George Santayana

"Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a love about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion." - George Santayana

"A dramatic centre of action and passion… utterly unlike what in modern philosophy we call consciousness. The soul causes the body to grow, to assume its ancestral shape, to develop all its ancestral instincts, to wake and to sleep by turns… and at the same time determines the responses that the living body shall make to the world." - George Santayana

"Young men have a passion for regarding their elders as senile." -

"The best passion is compassion." - Jamaican Proverbs

"The soul of man (whose life or motion is perpetual contemplation or thought) is the mistress of two potent rivals, the one reason, the other passion, that are in the continual suit." - James Harrington or Harington

"Man is a useless passion." - Jean-Paul Sartre

"Like flakes of snow that fall imperceptibly upon the earth, the seemingly unimportant events of life succeed one another. As snowflakes gather, so our habits are formed. No single flake that is added to the pile produces a sensible change. No single action creates, however it may exhibit a man's character. But as the tempest hurls the avalanche down the mountain and overwhelms the inhabitant and his habitation, so passion, acting on the elements of mischief which pernicious habits have brought together, may overthrow the edifice of truth and virtue." - Jeremy Bentham

"It’s often during the hardest times, rather than the most peaceful ones, that you find a purpose that gives meaning to your days so that your life becomes a blessing. The passion born of meaning is more than a psychological breakthrough or an emotional coping strategy. It’s a glimpse into the soul that elevates life’s predictable hardships into sacred quests." - Joan Borysenko

"What passion cannot music raise and quell?" - John Dryden

"The florid, elevated, and figurative way is for the passions; for love and hatred, fear and anger, are begotten in the soul by showing their objects out of their true proportion, either greater than the life, or less; but instruction is to be given by showing them what they naturally are. A man is to be cheated into passion, but reasoned into truth." - John Dryden

"Keep forever in view the momentous value of life; aim at its worthiest use - its sublimest end; spurn, with disdain, those foolish trifles and frivolous vanities, who so often consume life, as the locusts did Egypt; and devote yourself, with the ardor of a passion, to attain the most divine improvements of the human soul." - John Foster, fully John Watson Foster

"Take heed lest passion sway thy judgment to do aught, which else free will would not admit." - John Milton

"The pleasantest part of a man’s life is generally that which passes in courtship, provided his passion be sincere, and the party beloved kind with discretion. Love, desire, hope, all the pleasing emotions of the soul, rise in the pursuit." - Joseph Addison

"Admiration is a very short-lived passion that decays on growing familiar with its object unless it be still fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by perpetual miracles rising up into its view." - Joseph Addison

"If our belief is passionate enough, the river comes to us and in whatever form the passionate belief makes possible. Belief is causative and passion is formative. Passionate belief is the chaotic attractor that lifts chaos into its particular order." - Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe

"Tenderness is the repose of passion." - Joseph Joubert

"Reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction." - Kahlil Gibran

"The conscience is not automatically infallible; it can easily make mistakes, and it is very difficult to distinguish its voice - the real voice of conscience - from the voice of precipitation, passion, convenience or self-will, or of moral primitiveness." - Karl Rahner

"Intellectual passion drives out sensuality." - Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

"God helps all the children as they move into a time of life they do not understand and must struggle through with precepts they have picked from the garbage can of older people, clinging with the passion of the lost to odds and ends that will mess them up for all time, or hating the trash so much they will waste their future on the hatred." - Lillian Hellman, fully Lillian Florience "Lily" Hellman

"Miserable indeed is a world in which we have knowledge without understanding, criticism without appreciation, beauty without love, truth without passion, righteousness without mercy, and courtesy without a warm heart!" - Lin Yutang

"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." - Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

"In order to judge of the inside of others, study your own; for men in general are very much alike, and though one has one prevailing passion, and another has another, yet their operations are much the same; and whatever engages or disgusts, pleases, or offends you in others, will, mutatis mutandis, engage, disgust, please, or offend others in you." - Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

"Wise people may say what they will, but one passion is never cured by another." - Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

"When you have found out the prevailing passion of any man, remember never to trust him where that passion is concerned." - Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

"An absolute command of your temper, so as not to be provoked to passion, upon any account; patience, to hear frivolous, impertinent, and unreasonable applications; with address enough to refuse, without offending, or, by your manner of granting, to double the obligation; dexterity enough to conceal a truth without telling a lie; sagacity enough to read other people’s countenances; and serenity enough not to let them discover anything by your; a seeming frankness with a real reserve. There are the rudiments of a politician." - Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

"Life’s meaning rests in the eye of the beholder and in our constant desire to approach perfection. Life is so immense and complex that there is no one truth, only the rule of destiny... We do not choose life; life chooses us. Yet we try to follow our destiny, our passion our drive. We must live every minute as if it is our first and our last... The meaning of life lies in our desire to help others... Earthly life is an eternal miracle. In a moment of grace, we can grasp eternity in the palm of our hand." - Marcel Marceau, born Marcel Mangel

"The altogether courageous and great spirit has, above all, two characteristics. First, he is indifferent to outward circumstances. Such a person is convinced that nothing but moral goodness and propriety are worth admiring and striving for. He knows he ought not be subject to any person, passion, or accident of fortune. His second characteristic is that when his soul has been disciplined in this way, he should do things that are not only great and highly useful, but also deeds that are arduous, laborious and fraught with danger to life and to those things that make life worthwhile." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL

"In what respect are we superior to brute creation, if intellect is not allowed to be the guide of passion? Brutes hope and fear, love and hate; but, without a capacity to improve, a power of turning these passions to good or evil, they neither acquire virtue nor wisdom. - Why? Because the Creator has not given them reason." - Mary Wollstonecraft

"Passion crashes into obstacles; reason peers around them." - Mason Cooley

"When passion is on the throne, reason is out of doors." - Matthew Henry

"To live is not just to survive, but to thrive with passion, compassion, some humor and style." - Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson

"If we begin by being, then everything we do will encompass…our whole self. When having is the impetus [for our work], then the doing is influenced by material concerns, which can never enable us to live our passion. One reason so many people are dissatisfied and unhappy with their work is that they begin by seeing to have rather than to be." - Michael Toms and Justine Willis Toms

"As you are able to give energy to your passion, purpose will emerge. Clarity of purpose comes from honoring what gives your life meaning. Work has become devoid of meaning because people are asked to follow instructions rather than their creativity. True work is an expression of following our inner voice, heeding the spiritual call, and living your passion." - Michael Toms and Justine Willis Toms

"Following your passion is both a difficult path and an easy one; it's a paradox. It is difficult because it will lead you into unknown territory. It is easy because you will be doing what you love." - Michael Toms and Justine Willis Toms

"Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion too!" - Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin

"Life is action and passion; therefore, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of the time, at period of being judged not to have lived." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

"Jealousy would be far less torturous if we understood that love is a passion entirely unrelated to our merits." - Paul Eldridge

"The irrational desire which overcomes the tendency of opinion towards right, and is led away to the enjoyment of beauty, and especially of personal beauty, by the desires which are her own kindred - that supreme desire, I say, which by leading conquers and by the force of passion is reinforced, from this very force, receiving a name, is called love." - Plato NULL