Famous Quotes & Sayings

Arthur Koestler

When a person identifies himself with a group his critical faculties are diminished and his passions enhanced by a kind of emotive resonance. The individual is not a killer, the group is, and by identifying with it, the individual becomes one. This is the infernal dialect reflected in man's history.

Dennis Prager

The more passions you have the happier you'll be

Democritus

Medicine heals diseases of the body, wisdom frees the soul from passions.

Denis Diderot

One declaims endlessly against the passions; one imputes all of man's suffering to them. One forgets that they are also the source of all his pleasures.

Edgar Allan Poe

The object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object, Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose.

Edgar Allan Poe

And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore, do we the more impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him, who shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge. To indulge for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I say, that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.

Edgar Allan Poe

There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a Plunge.

Edgar Allan Poe

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

Edward Abbey

Indolence and melancholy: Each generates the other. If one can speak of such feeble passions as generating anything.

Edward Abbey

John Updike: our greatest suburban chic-boutique man of letters. A smug and fatal complacency has stunted his growth beyond hope of surgical repair. Not enough passion in his collected works to generate steam in a beer can. Nevertheless, he is considered by some critics to be America's finest *living* author: Hold a chilled mirror to his lips and you will see, presently, a fine and dewy moisture condensing -- like a faery breath! -- upon the glass.

Edward Abbey

A man without passion would be like a body without a soul. Or even more grotesque, like a soul without a body.

Aristotle

Even the best of men in authority are liable to be corrupted by passion. We may conclude then that the law is reason without passion, and it is therefore preferable to any individual.

Aristotle

The true end of tragedy is to purify the passions.

Aristotle

Whereas the law is passionless, passion must ever sway the heart of man.

Aristotle

Music imitates (represents) the passions or states of the soul, such as gentleness, anger, courage, temperance, and their opposites.

Aristotle

Therefore the good man ought to be a lover of self, since he will then both benefit himself by acting nobly and aid his fellows; but the bad man ought not to be a lover of self, since he will follow his base passions, and so injure both himself and his neighbors. With the bad man therefore, what he does is not in accord with what he ought to do, but the good man does what he ought, since intelligence always chooses for itself that which is best, and the good man obeys his intelligence.

Aristotle

Irrational passions would seem to be as much a part of human nature as is reason.

Aristotle

Music directly represents the passions of the soul. If one listens to the wrong kind of music, he will become the wrong kind of person.

Alexis de Tocqueville

In democracies, nothing is more great or more brilliant than commerce: it attracts the attention of the public, and fills the imagination of the multitude; all energetic passions are directed towards it.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Men living in democratic times have many passions, but most of their passions either end in the love of riches, or proceed from it.

Alexis de Tocqueville

To build enormous palaces, to conquer or to mimic nature, to ransack the world in order to gratify the passions of a man, is not thought of, but to add a few yards of land to your field, to plant an orchard, or enlarge a dwelling, to always be making life more comfortable and convenient, to avoid trouble, and to satisfy the smallest wants without effort and almost without cost. These are small objects, but the soul clings to them; it dwells upon them closely and day by day, till they at last shut out the rest of the world and sometimes intervene between itself and heaven.

Alexis de Tocqueville

I have only one passion, the love of liberty and human dignity.

Alexis de Tocqueville

To commit violent and unjust acts, it is not enough for a government to have the will or even the power; the habits, ideas and passions of the time must lend themselves to their committal.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Trade is the natural enemy of all violent passions because it loves moderation, delights in compromise an is most careful to avoid anger.

Alexandra Robbins

There is nothing wrong with you just because you haven't yet met people who share your interests or outlook on life. Unless you are doing something unhealthy or destructive, take pride in your beliefs, passions, and values. Know that you will eventually meet people who will appreciate you for being you.

Alexandra Roach

That's where my passion was ignited, on the set of 'Pobol Y Cwm.' I loved it and I've had such a passion for TV and films. I can't do anything else.

Alexandre Dumas

Every individual, from the highest to the lowest degree, has his place in the ladder of social life, and around him swirls a little world of interests, composed of stormy passions and conflicting atoms

Would that our harsh judgments could be restrained, our impatience checked, our selfishness broken down, our passions controlled, our waste of time and life in worthless or unworthy objects corrected, by the thought that there is One in whose hands we are, who cares for us with a parent's love, who will judge us hereafter without the slightest tinge of human' infirmity, the All-Merciful and the All-Just.

Alan Cohen

The first step to boosting your income is to identify where your passion lives and to be true to it.

Aleister Crowley

They look for a victim to chivy, and howl him down, and finally lynch him in a sheer storm of sexual frenzy which they honestly imagine to be moral indignation, patriotic passion or some equally allowable emotion, it may be an innocent Negro, a Jew like Leo Frank, a harmless half-witted German; a Christ-like idealist of the type of Debs, an enthusiastic reformer like Emma Goldman.

Aleister Crowley

The greatest, like Rembrandt, paint a gallant, a hag, and a carcass with equal passion and rapture; they love the truth as it is. They do not admit that anything can be ugly or evil; its existence justifies itself. This is because they know themselves to be part of an harmonious unity; to disdain any item of it would be to blaspheme the whole. The Thelemite is able to revel in any experience soever; in each he recognizes the tokens of ultimate Truth. It is surely obvious, even intellectually, that all phenomena are interdependent, and therefore involve each other.

Algernon Sidney

Many things are unknown to the wisest, and the best men can never wholly divest themselves of passions and affections... nothing can or ought to be permanent but that which is perfect.

Alfred North Whitehead

It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty in our present society .