Quotes About Passions

Oh, believe me, that when three great passions, such as sorrow, love, and gratitude fill the heart, ennui can find no place." "You

The pursuit of wealth generally diverts men of great talents and of great passions from the pursuit of power, and it very frequently happens that a man does not undertake to direct the fortune of the State until he has discovered his incompetence to conduct his own affairs.

What frightens me most is the danger that, amid all the constant trivial preoccupations of private life, ambition may lose both its force and its greatness, that human passions may grow gentler and at the same time baser, with the result that the progress of the body social may become daily quieter and less aspiring.

for a taste for variety is one of the characteristic passions of democracy.

I do not assert that the ostensible end, or even that the secret aim, of American parties is to promote the rule of aristocracy or democracy in the country; but I affirm that aristocratic or democratic passions may easily be detected at the bottom of all parties, and that, although they escape a superficial observation, they are the main point and the very soul of every faction in the United States.

The taste for luxury, the love of war, the sway of fashion, and the most superficial as well as the deepest passions of the human heart, co-operated

The revolution of the United States was the result of a mature and dignified taste for freedom, and not of a vague or ill-defined craving for independence. It contracted no alliance with the turbulent passions of anarchy; but its course was marked, on the contrary, by an attachment to whatever was lawful and orderly.

It has been noticed that, in the face of imminent danger, a man rarely remains at his normal level; he either rises well above himself or dips well below. The same happens to nations. Extreme dangers, instead of lifting a nation, sometimes end by bringing it low; they arouse its passions without giving them direction and confuse its perceptions without clarification.

Laws cannot succeed in rekindling the ardor of an extinguished faith, but men may be interested in the fate of their country by the laws. By this influence the vague impulse of patriotism, which never abandons the human heart, may be directed and revived; and if it be connected with the thoughts, the passions, and the daily habits of life, it may be consolidated into a durable and rational sentiment.

Rather, he accepted democracy as an objective fact and wanted to address positive and negative lessons the French people could learn from the American example. He wrote, "I sought there the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or to hope from its progress."5

Sir, when the love of peace degenerates into fear of war, it becomes of all passions the most despicable." —Senator Giles of Virginia, to President Thomas Jefferson, before the War of 1812

Our passions are the true phoenixes; when the old one is burnt out, a new one rises from its ashes.

Reason can never be popular. Passions and feelings may become popular, but reason will always remain the sole property of a few eminent individuals.

Often do I strive to allay the burning fever of my blood; and you have never witnessed anything so unsteady, so uncertain, as my heart. But need I confess this to you, my dear friend, who have so often endured the anguish of witnessing my sudden transitions from sorrow to immoderate joy, and from sweet melancholy to violent passions? I treat my poor heart like a sick child, and gratify its every fancy. Do not mention this again: there are people who would censure me for it.

A man who cannot control his temper is not very likely to control his passions, and no matter what his pretensions in religion, he moves in daily life very close to the animal plane.

Life is full of wonderful passions that come and go over the years, but the only one that will never let you down is reading.

O May, sweet-voice one, going thus before, Forever June may pour her warm red wine Of life and passions,--sweeter days are thine!

Life is merely a fraction of a second. An infinitely small amount of time to fulfill our desires, our dreams, our passions.

What is life? A gulf of troubled waters, where the soul, like a vexed bark, is tossed upon the waves of pain and pleasure by the wavering breath of passions.

The dream remains overloaded with the badly lived passions of daytime life. Solitude in the nocturnal dream is always a hostility. It is strange. It isn't really our solitude.

In tragic life, God wot, No villain need be! Passions spin the plot: We are betrayed by what is false within.

The obsessions we have are pretty much the same our whole lives. Mine are people, the human condition, life.

Of all base passions, fear is the most accursed.

There's no time in life to do all the roles I'd like to play.