“We flatter ourselves by claiming to be rational and intellectual beings, but it would be a great mistake to suppose that men are always guided by reason. We are strange inconsistent creatures, and we act quite as often, perhaps oftener, from prejudice or passion.” — Sir John Lubbock, “Tact,” The Use of Life
“We sometimes feel for another, a passion of which he himself seems to be altogether incapable; because, when we put ourselves in his case, that passion arises in our breast from the imagination, though it does not in his from the reality. We blush for the impudence and rudeness of another, though he himself appears to have no sense of the impropriety of his own behaviour; because we cannot help feeling with what confusion we ourselves should be covered, had we behaved in so absurd a manner.” — Adam Smith, “Of Sympathy,” The Theory of Moral Sentiments
“No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.” — Edmund Burke, The Sublime and Beautiful
“If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us!” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1831-12-18)
“We must not draw general conclusions from certain particular principles, though, in the main, true ones. We must not suppose that, because a man is a rational animal, he will therefore always act rationally; or, because he has such or such a predominant passion, that he will act invariably and consequentially in the pursuit of it. No. We are complicated machines: and though we have one main-spring, that gives motion to the whole, we have an infinity of little wheels, which, in their turns, retard, precipitate, and sometimes stop that motion.” — Philip Stanhope, Letters To His Son (1749-12-19)
“I think that as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., “In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched With Fire,” Memorial Day address, Keene, New Hampshire. (30 May 1884)
“No one HAS to do something he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. But then again, if that’s what you wind up doing, by all means convince yourself that you HAD to do it. You’ll have lots of company.” — Hunter S. Thompson, Letter to Hume Logan (22 April 1958)
“Passions are spiritual rebels, and raise sedition against the understanding.” — Ben Jonson, Timber: or, Discoveries made upon men and matter
“What’s the point of being efficient if you’re only leading an efficiently blank life?” — Douglas Coupland, Girlfriend in a Coma
“Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals, for the most part governed by the impulse of passion.” — Alexander Hamilton, Letter To James A. Bayard (1802-04-16)
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