A vigorous mind is as necessarily accompanied with violent passions as a great fire with great heat. Burke. Disappointed love makes the misery of youth; disappointed ambition that of manhood, and successful avarice that of age. These three attack us through life; and it is our duty to If the passions of the mind be strong, they stand on our guard. — Goldsmith. easily sophisticate the understanding. Hooker. When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted. Thomas Paine. Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he Disraeli. appeals to the imagination. -- Passion is the drunkenness of the mind. South. Who is strong? He who subdues his pas- that need training and the curb. sions. Talmud. It is not the absence, but the mastery, of our passions which affords happiness. Mme. de Maintenon. The passions do not die out; they burn out. Ninon de Lenclos. As our bodies are formed of clay, so are even our virtues made up of meanness and vice. Add vainglory to avarice, and it rises to ambition. Lust inspires the lover, and selfish wants the friend. Sterne. Some passions cannot be regulated, but must be entirely cut off. Seneca. The passions are the gales of life; and it is religion only that can prevent them from rising into a tempest. - Dr. Watts. Lose not thyself, nor give thy humors way; God gave them to thee under lock and key. George Herbert. This is the wound of a passionate man's life: he contracts debts, when he is furious, which his virtue, if he has virtue, obliges him to discharge at the return of reason. - Dr. Johnson. W. G. Simms. Strong passion under the direction of a feeble reason feeds a low fever, which serves only to destroy the body that entertains it. - Burke. Passion makes us feel, but never see clearly. Montesquicu. Our passions depend on the life we lead, on the profession we have chosen. Had Charles XII. been born in obscurity, what would he have done with his passion for war? Prince de Ligne. The passions in men are the winds necessary to put everything in motion, though they often cause storms. - La Fontaine. Take heed lest passion sway the judgment to do aught which else free will would not admit. Milton. There are moments when our passions speak and decide for us, and we seem to stand by and wonder. They carry in them an inspiration of crime, that in one instant does the work of long premeditation. — George Eliot. The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er; so calm are we when passions are no more. — Waller. In solitude the passions feed upon the heart. Bulwer-Lytton. The blossoms of passion, gay and luxuriant Our headstrong passions shut the door of our flowers, are brighter and fuller of fragrance; souls against God. - Confucius. but they beguile us and lead us astray, and their odor is deadly. -Longfellow. Weak minds make treaties with the passions they cannot overcome, and try to purchase happiness at the expense of principle; but the resolute will of a strong man scorns such means, and struggles nobly with his foe to achieve great deeds. - Longfellow. The passions are the winds which fill the sails of the vessel; they sink it at times, but without them it would be impossible to make way. Bile makes man passionate and sick; but without bile man could not live. — Voltaire. Passions are likened best to floods and streams; the shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb. Sir Walter Raleigh. There is a holy love and a holy rage, and our best virtues never glow so brightly as when our passions are excited in the cause. Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues; and the best of us are better when roused. - Colton. When the passions rule, it is not until after reason has been dethroned. Tacitus. Passion makes the best observations and the most wretched conclusions. It is a telescope whose field is so much the brighter as it is narrower. Richter. PASSIONS. Were it not for the salutary agitation of the passions, the waters of life would become dull, stagnant, and as unfit for all vital purposes as those of the Dead Sea. Chatfield. All the passions seek after whatever nourishes them. Fear loves the idea of danger. Joubert. He who is passionate and hasty is generally honest. It is your cool, dissembling hypocrite of whom you should beware. Lavater. We can mock at the fury of the elements, for they are less terrible than the passions of the heart; at the devastations of the awful skies, for they are less than the wrath of man. Bulwer-Lytton. Flowers whose wild odors breathe but agonies. - Byron. No man's body is as strong as his appetites. Tillotson. soul. Passion is the great mover and spring of the When men's passions are strongest, they have great and noble effects; but they are then also apt to fall into the greatest miscarriage.— Thomas Sprat. In the human breast two master-passions cannot coexist. — Campbell. Revenge succeeds to love, and rage to grief. Dryden. The world triumphs over its votaries by approaching them on the side of their passions; and it does not so much deceive their reason as captivate their heart. Robert Hall. It is the excess, and not the nature, of our passions which is perishable. Like the trees which grow by the tomb of Protesilaus, the passions flourish till they reach a certain height; but no sooner is that height attained than they wither away. - Bulwer-Lytton. It may serve for a great lesson of humiliation to mankind to behold the habits and passions of men trampling over interest, friendship, honor, and their own personal safety, as well as that of their country. Swift. If we subdue our unruly and disorderly passions within ourselves, we should live more easily and quietly with others. - Stillingfleet. Steel assassinates; the passions kill. Mme. Deluzy. Our strong passions break into a thousand purposes. Women have one. Their love is dangerous, but their hate is fatal. How readily we wish time spent revoked, Beaconsfield. that we might try the ground again where once through inexperience, as we now perPassions are like storms which, full of pres-ceive we missed that happiness we might ent mischief, serve to purify the atmosphere. have found! - Cowper. Ramsay. If we could have a little patience we should escape much mortification; time takes away as much as it gives. Mme. de Sévigné. If the wicked flourish and thou suffer, be not He that hath patience hath fat thrushes for discouraged. They are fatted for destruction; a farthing. George Herbert. God is with the patient. - Koran. Imitate time. It destroys slowly; it undermines, wears, loosens, separates; it does not uproot. Joubert. thou art dieted for health. Thomas Fuller. Endurance is the prerogative of woman, enabling the gentlest to suffer what would Wieland. cause terror to manhood. Nothing does so much honor to a woman as her patience, and nothing does her so little as Joubert. Patience ornaments the woman and proves the patience of her husband. the man. Tertullian. Patience, and shuffle the cards! - Cervantes. How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees? Shakspeare. Patience, sovereign o'er transmuted ills. — Dr. Johnson. No school is more necessary to children than patience, because either the will must be broken in childhood or the heart in old age. — Richter. There's no music in a "rest" that I know of, but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life melody, always talking of perseverance and courage and fortitude; but patience is the finest and worthiest part of fortitude, and the Ruskin. - Dr. Johnson. rarest too. |