Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Passion
Fountain-heads and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves!
Beaumont and Fletcher—The Nice Valour. Song. Act III. Sc. 3.
Only I discern
Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn.
Robert Browning—Two in the Campagna. St. 12.
For one heat, all know, doth drive out another,
One passion doth expel another still.
George Chapman—Monsieur D’Olive. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 8.
Filled with fury, rapt, inspir’d.
Collins—The Passions. L. 10.
We are ne’er like angels till our passion dies.
Thomas Dekker—The Honest Whore. Pt. II. Act I. Sc. 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.
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.
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.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. VIII. L. 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.
Pope—Moral Essays. Ep. I. L. 174.
And you, brave Cobham! to the latest breath
Shall feel your ruling passion strong in death.
Pope—Moral Essays. Ep. I. L. 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.
Pope—Moral Essays. Ep. II. L. 207.
The ruling passion, be it what it will,
The ruling passion conquers reason still.
Pope—Moral Essays. Ep. III. L. 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. Vol. I. Ch. III.
Give me that man
That is not passion’s slave.
Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 75.
What to ourselves in passion we propose,
The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 204.
O, that my tongue were in the thunder’s mouth!
Then with a passion would I shake the world.
King John. Act III. Sc. 4. L. 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.
Othello. Act V. Sc. 2. L. 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.
Tennyson—Locksley Hall. St. 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. L. 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.
Wordsworth—Lament of Mary, Queen of Scots.