Passion

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 580-81.

Passion

• Fountain-heads and pathless groves,
  Places which pale passion loves!
  • Beaumont and Fletcher, The Nice Valour (c. 1615–25; published 1647), Song, Act III, scene 3.

• Only I discern
  Infinite passion, and the pain
  Of finite hearts that yearn.
  • Robert Browning, Two in the Campagna, Stanza 12.

• For one heat, all know, doth drive out another,
  One passion doth expel another still.
  • George Chapman, Monsieur D'Olive, Act V, scene 1, line 8.

• Filled with fury, rapt, inspir'd.
  • Collins, The Passions, line 10.

• We are ne'er like angels till our passion dies.
  • Thomas Dekker, The Honest Whore (1604), Part II, Act I, scene 2.

• Bee to the blossom, moth to the flame;
  Each to his passion; what's in a name?
  • Helen Hunt Jackson, Vanity of Vanities.

• If we resist our passions it is more from their weakness than from our strength.
  • François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims. No. 125.

• Toutes les passions ne sont autre chose que les divers degrés de la chaleur et de la froideur du sang.
  • All the passions are nothing else than different degrees of heat and cold of the blood.
  • François de La Rochefoucauld, Premier Supplement, VIII.

• Where passion leads or prudence points the way.
  • Robert Lowth, Choice of Hercules.

• Take heed lest passion sway
  Thy judgment to do aught, which else free will
  Would not admit.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book VIII, line 634.

• Search then the ruling passion; there alone,
  The wild are constant, and the cunning known;
  The fool consistent, and the false sincere;
  Priests, princes, women, no dissemblers here.
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-35), Epistle I, line 174.

• And you, brave Cobham! to the latest breath
  Shall feel your ruling passion strong in death.
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-35), Epistle I, line 262.

• In men, we various ruling passions find;
  In women two almost divide the kind;
  Those only fix'd, they first or last obey.
  The love of pleasure, and the love of sway.
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-35), Epistle II, line 207.

• The ruling passion, be it what it will,
  The ruling passion conquers reason still.
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-35), Epistle III, line 153.

• May I govern my passions with absolute sway,
  And grow wiser and better as my strength wears away.
  • Walter Pope, The Old Man's Wish.

• Passions are likened best to floods and streams,
  The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.
  • Sir Walter Raleigh, The Silent Lover. See Cayley's Life of Raleigh, Volume I, Chapter III.

• Give me that man
  That is not passion's slave.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act III, scene 2, line 75.

• What to ourselves in passion we propose,
  The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act III, scene 2, line 204.

• O, that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth!
  Then with a passion would I shake the world.
  • William Shakespeare, King John (1598), Act III, scene 4, line 38.

• Alas, why gnaw you so your nether lip?
  Some bloody passion shakes your very frame;
  These are portents; but yet I hope, I hope,
  They do not point on me.
  • William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act V, scene 2, line 43.

• He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,
  Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Locksley Hall, Stanza 25.

• The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er;
  So calm are we when passions are no more!
  • Edmund Waller, On Divine Poems, line 7.

• But, children, you should never let
  Such angry passions rise;
  Your little hands were never made
  To tear each other's eyes.
  • Isaac Watts, Divine Songs, Song XVI.

• And beauty, for confiding youth,
  Those shocks of passion can prepare
  That kill the bloom before its time,
  And blanch, without the owner's crime,
  The most resplendent hair.
  • William Wordsworth, Lament of Mary, Queen of Scots.