Passion costs me too much to bestow it on every trifle.
~ Thomas Adams

The fire which enlightens is the same fire which consumes.
~ Henri Frederic Amiel

Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.
~ Henri Frederic Amiel

Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.
~ Honore De Balzac

To hide a passion totally (or even to hide, more simply, its excess) is inconceivable: not because the human subject is too weak, but because passion is in essence made to be seen: the hiding must be seen: I want you to know that I am hiding something from you, that is the active paradox I must resolve: at one and the same time it must be known and not known: I want you to know that I don't want to show my feelings: that is the message I address to the other.
~ Roland Barthes

What is passion? It is surely the becoming of a person. Are we not, for most of our lives, marking time? Most of our being is at rest, unlived. In passion, the body and the spirit seek expression outside of self. Passion is all that is other from self. Sex is only interesting when it releases passion. The more extreme and the more expressed that passion is, the more unbearable does life seem without it. It reminds us that if passion dies or is denied, we are partly dead and that soon, come what may, we will be wholly so.
~ John Boorman

Passion doesn't look beyond the moment of its existence.
~ Christian Nevell Bovee

The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.
~ Christian Nevell Bovee

I don't think I can play any other way but all out. I enjoy the game so much because I'm putting so much into it.
~ George Brett

Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television.
~ Rita Mae Brown

Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humor and passion.
~ Sir Thomas Browne

I'd rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate.
~ George Burns

In her first passion, a woman loves her lover, in all the others all she loves is love.
~ Lord Byron

There is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever. Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state?
~ Lord Byron

If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn't have opened for anyone else.
~ Joseph Campbell

All passions exaggerate; and they are passions only because they do exaggerate.
~ Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort

He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.
~ Marcus T. Cicero

My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.
~ Bette Davis

Only passions, great passions can elevate the soul to great things.
~ Denis Diderot

There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.
~ Denis Diderot