For me the breakthrough was the realization that I wasn't the center of the universe or even the centre of my own world. That you and your work, your living, are not the only reason you're here. Your role is to shepherd your children through to adulthood. That's the point of life. Your own little sessions and needs and passions are just there to flavour you and help you do that job for your children.
Examine from time to time what are the dominant passions of your soul, and having ascertained this, mold your life, so that in thought, word, and deed you may as far as possible counteract them.
Love is only one of many passions.
I stopped acting because I had other passions I wanted to pursue.
Ambition, and Covetousnesse are Passions that are perpetually incumbent, and pressing.
However we may conceal our passions under the veil. . . there is always some place where they peep out.
Fanaticism is a fire, which heats the mind indeed, but heats without purifying. It stimulates and ferments all the passions; but it rectifies none of them.
Men are admitted into heaven not because they have curbed or governed their passions, but because they have cultivate their understandings.
The exhaustion of the passions is the beginning of wisdom.
To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions.
Every Christian has the power to heal infirmities-not of others, but his own, and not of the body, but of the soul-that is, sins and sinful habits-and to cast out devils, rejecting evil thoughts sown by them, and extinguishing the excitement of passions enflamed by them.
In order to exert influence over people, there were other things that could be used besides love. Knowledge seemed to be an equally strong force, perhaps even stronger. Whoever possessed knowledge not only had power over the changeable passions of people, but also power over their thinking, over their minds, hearts and souls.
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
Grief is, of all the passions, the one that is the most ingenious and indefatigable in finding food for its own subsistence.
The passions often engender their contraries.
Passions unguided are for the most part mere madness.
The true end of tragedy is to purify the passions.
Jesus Christ raised women above the condition of mere slaves, mere ministers to the passions of the man, raised them by His sympathy, to be Ministers of God.
He who, with strong passions, remains chaste--he who, keenly sensitive, with manly power of indignation in him, can yet restrain himself and forgive--these are strong men, spiritual heroes.
Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than others, but only those who have greater designs.