Quotes About Passions

As men are affected in all ages by the same passions, the occasions which bring about great changes are different, but the causes are always the same.

The government of man should be the monarchy of reason: it is too often the democracy of passions or the anarchy of humors.

Each man has his own desires; all do not possess the same inclinations.

Ideas devour the ages as men are devoured by their passions. When man is cured, human nature will cure itself perhaps.

For woman is yin, the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds.

Man peoples his current living space with a world of his own, crowded with the offspring of his fancies, desires, impulses, and passions.

Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him, if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities, and find a chieftain in his own passions.

Men are much oftener thrown on their knees by the melancholy than by the agreeable passions.

A man who cannot control his temper is not very likely to control his passions.

We are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man's afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures.

Those fierce animal passions of his were his masters, not his slaves, and he was as much their victim as those he punished when he was in their grip. And despite what he had done to me tonight, I knew that his desire was real. Even if all his need was for a living body and arms to hold him, it was still a bitter desperate need.

Faith in our own talent is the gravity, the force that keeps us in orbit around the potential of our own passions and ideas, even when we are temporarily marooned on the dark side of the moon.

The man [Grant] who more than any other, save Lincoln, had changed us into a nation whose citizens were all freemen, realized entirely that these freemen would remain free only while they kept mastery over their own evil passions.

The days of this life are short and evil, full of grief and distress. Here man is defiled by many sins, ensnared in many passions, enslaved by many fears, and burdened with many cares. He is distracted by many curiosities and entangled in many vanities, surrounded by many errors and worn by many labors, oppressed by temptations, weakened by pleasures, and tortured by want.

because I am still weak in love and imperfect in virtue, I need to be strengthened and comforted by Thee; therefore visit Thou me often and instruct me with Thy holy ways of discipline. Deliver me from evil passions, and cleanse my heart from all inordinate affections, that, being healed and altogether cleansed within, I may be made ready to love, strong to suffer, steadfast to endure.

We pursue our own solitary passions and seldom look up, seldom sense that it is we ourselves who form the swelling flood of history, the dark constellation of events we would sooner lay at the feet of others. Until the storm finally gathers, and then we look up and we grow afraid, and we say: This is not what I intended.

Temperance is simply a disposition of the mind which set bounds to the passions

Temperance is simply a disposition of the mind which sets bounds to the passions

it is sufficient to say, that a chorus of work, the whole of my past life - but, as if recalled by an act of memory, but as if present and incarnated in the music: no longer painful to dwell upon: but the detail of it's incidents removed, or blended in some hazy abstraction; and its passions exalted, spiritualized, and sublimed. All this was to be had for five shillings.

I try to stay away from calling people nerds or whatever, because I've got my own fetishes and interests.

But there was an important and essential truth contained in the idea, and the truth was that these things matter, and it's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently, or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party.

By means of poetry all this suffering and effort could be transformed into dream; no matter how much of the ephemeral existed, poetry could immortalize it by turning it into song. Only two or three primitive passions had governed me until this time: fear, the struggle to conquer fear, and the yearning for freedom. But now two new passions were kindled inside me: beauty and the thirst for learning.

It is true that they are less inflamed than formerly by political passions properly speaking; but do you not see that their passions, far from being political, have become social? Do you not see that, little by little, ideas and opinions are spreading amongst them which aim not merely at removing such and such laws, such a ministry or such a government, but at breaking up the very foundations of society itself?

Poems were too close to prayer, rousing regrettable passions. Waiting for God to rescue you when it was up to you. Poetry and prayer put ideas in people's heads that got them killed, distracting them from the ruthless mechanism of the world.