Quotes
Quotes about Passion
The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything. - The Passionate State of the Mind, 1954.
The April winds are magical, And thrill our tuneful frames; The garden-walks are passional To bachelors and dames.
Art is the most passionate orgy within man's grasp.
I have a passion for ballad. . . . They are the gypsy children of song, born under green hedgerows in the leafy lanes and bypaths of literature,--in the genial Summertime.
We get no good By being ungenerous, even to a book, And calculating profits--so much help By so much reading. It is rather when We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound, Impassioned for its beauty, and salt of truth-- 'Tis then we get the right good from a book.
The profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader. The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.
The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.
Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion.
The truly brave, When they behold the brave oppressed with odds, Are touched with a desire to shield and save:-- A mixture of wild beasts and demi-gods Are they--now furious as the sweeping wave, Now moved with pity; even as sometimes nods The rugged tree unto the summer wind, Compassion breathes along the savage mind.
'Tis pleasant purchasing our fellow-creatures; And all are to be sold, if you consider Their passions, and are dext'rous; some by features Are brought up, others by a warlike leader; Some by a place--as tend their years or natures; The most by ready cash--but all have prices, From crowns to kicks, according to their vices.
In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill-will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow-men, not knowing what they do.
Where passion leads or prudence points the way.
I never heard a passion so confused, So strange, outrageous, and so variable As the dog Jew did utter in the streets: 'My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter! Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats!'
Feast of Agnes, Child Martyr at Rome, 304 At no point does the Gospel encourage us to believe that every man will hearken to it, charm we never so wisely. The prophets, for all their passionate sincerity, for all their courageous simplifyings of the Gospel, will meet many deaf adders who stop their ears. We must reckon with this certain fact, and refuse to be daunted by it. But also there comes a point where accommodation can go no further. It is the Gospel we have to present, however we do it. We cannot hope to do it unless we walk humbly with the modern man, as well as with God, unless we are much more eager to learn from him and about him, than to instruct him. God help us, it is all very difficult. But was there ever a task better worth trying to do, or one in which, whether we fail or succeed, we more surely find our freedom?
Feast of All Saints He took upon Him the flesh in which we have sinned, that by wearing our flesh He might forgive sins; a flesh which He shares with us by wearing it, not by sinning in it. He blotted out through death the sentence of death, that by a new creation of our race in Himself He might sweep away the penalty appointed by the former Law... For Scripture had foretold that He who is God should die; that the victory and triumph of them that trust in Him lay in the fact that He, who is immortal and cannot be overcome by death, was to die that mortals might gain eternity. (Continued tomorrow) ... St. Hilary, On the Trinity November 2, 2000 Feast of All Souls In this calm assurance of safety did my soul gladly and hopefully take its rest, and feared so little the interruption of death, that death seemed only a name for eternal life. And the life of this present body was so far from seeming a burden or affliction that it was regarded as children regard their alphabets, sick men their draughts, shipwrecked sailors their swim, young men the training for their profession, future commanders their first campaignâthat is, as an endurable submission to present necessities, bearing the promise of a blissful immortality. ... St. Hilary, On the Trinity November 3, 2000 Feast of Richard Hooker, Priest, Anglican Apologist, Teacher, 1600 Commemoration of Martin of Porres, Dominican Friar, 1639 People make mistakes when they believe. They may even want something so badly that passion creates its own evidences. Reprehensible though these habits are, they nonetheless fall within the pale of man's general effort to conform the self to things as they are. But when a person acknowledges the deficiency of evidences and yet goes right on believing, he defends a position that is large with the elements of its own destruction. Any brand of inanity can be defended on such a principle.
Faith is the soul's consciousness of its Divine relationship and exalted destiny. It is the recognition by man's higher nature of sources of comfort and hope beyond anything that sense-knowledge discloses. It is the consciousness of a Divine Father toward Whom goes out all that is in affection and highest in moral aspiration; it is the premonition of a future life of which the best attainment here is but the twilight promise. In our day, the sudden and vast revelation of material wonders unsteadies and dims for the moment the spiritual sight; but the stars will shine clear again. The truth-seeking spirit and the spirit of faith, instead of being opposed, are in the deepest harmony. The man whose faith is most genuine is most willing to have its assertions tested by the severest scrutiny. And the passion for truth has underlying it a profound conviction that what is real is best; that when we get to the heart of things we shall find there what we most need. Faith is false to itself when it dreads truth, and the desire for truth is prompted by an inner voice of faith.
We must face the recognition that what the early Christians saw in Jesus Christ, and what we must accept if we look at him rather than at our imaginations about him, was not a person characterized by universal benignity, loving God and loving man. His love of God and his love of neighbor are two distinct virtues that have no common quality but only a common source. Love of God is adoration of the only true good; it is gratitude to the bestower of all gifts; it is joy in holiness; it is "consent to Being." But the love of man is pitiful rather than adoring; it is giving and forgiving rather than grateful. It suffers for them in their viciousness and profaneness; it does not consent to accept them as they are, but calls them to repentance. The love of God is nonpossessive Eros; the love of man pure Agape; the love of God is passion; the love of man, compassion. There is duality here, but not of like-minded interest in two great values, God and man. It is rather the duality of the Son of Man and Son of God, who loves God as man should love Him, and loves man as only God can love, with powerful pity for those who are foundering.
When compassion for the common man was born on Christmas Day, with it was born new hope among the multitudes. They feel a great, ever-rising determination to lift themselves and their children our of hunger and disease and misery, up to a higher level. Jesus started a fire upon the earth, and it is burning hot today, the fire of a new hope in the hearts of the hungry multitudes.
Feast of Michael & All Angels The nominal Christian, then, will see Jesus as a name, a representative, a symbol, a personification, a prototype, a figure, a model, an exemplar for something else. The nominal Christian pays homage to something about Jesus, rather than worshipping the man himself. For this reason, nominal Christians will extol the moral teachings of Jesus, the faith of Jesus, the personality of Jesus, the compassion of Jesus, the world view of Jesus, the self-understanding of Jesus, etc. None of these worships Jesus as the Christ, but only something about him, something peripheral to the actual flesh-and-blood man. This is why when the almighty God came into the world in Jesus, he came as the lowest of the low, as weakness itself, as a complete and utter nothing, in order that men would be forced into the crucial decision about him alone and would not be able to worship anything about him.
Passion: A feeling you feel when you feel a feeling you've never felt before.
Where there are love and generosity, there is joy. Where there are sincerity and sacrifice, there is friendship. Where there are harmony and simplicity, there is beauty. Where there are prayer and forgiveness, there is peace. Where there are moderation and patience, there is wisdom. Where there are conflicts and crises, there is opportunity. Where there are wonder and adventure, there is growth. Where there are adoration and confession, there is worship. Where there are compassion and concern, there is God. Where there are faith and hope, there is spring.
Our task must be to free ourselves . . . by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.
Compassion is no substitute for justice.
It is much easier to show compassion to animals. They are never wicked.
Out of compassion I destroy the darkness of their ignorance. From within them I light the lamp of wisdom and dispel all darkness from their lives.
