To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster! Denis Diderot
I deliberately wrote a poem in my last book where I was suggesting that there are other passions as great as or more important than the passion of sex. Thom Gunn
All the dark, malevolent Passions of the Soul are roused and exerted; its mild and amiable affections are suppressed; and with them, virtuous Principles are laid prostrate. Charles Inglis
The old interests of aristocracy - the romance of action, the exalted passions of chivalry and war - faded into the background, and their place was taken by the refined and intimate pursuits of peace and civilization. Lytton Strachey
The design of Rhetoric is to remove those Prejudices that lie in the way of Truth, to Reduce the Passions to the Government of Reasons; to place our Subject in a Right Light, and excite our Hearers to a due consideration of it. Mary Astell
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. Algernon Sydney
I now bid farewell to the country of my birth - of my passions - of my death; a country whose misfortunes have invoked my sympathies - whose factions I sought to quell - whose intelligence I prompted to a lofty aim - whose freedom has been my fatal dream. Thomas Francis Meagher
Those that have had great passions esteem themselves for the rest of their lives fortunate and unfortunate in being cured of them. Francois de La Rochefoucauld
A surging, seething, murmuring crowd of beings that are human only in name, for to the eye and ear they seem naught but savage creatures, animated by vile passions and by the lust of vengeance and of hate. Baroness Orczy
From their experience or from the recorded experience of others (history), men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow them to learn. Aldous Huxley
We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have I mastered to-day? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift. Lucius Annaeus Seneca
