Famous quotes containing the word passionate:
“If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“I heard the beat of centaur’s hoofs over the hard turf
As his dry and passionate talk devoured the afternoon.
“He is a charming man” “But after all what did he mean?”—
“His pointed ears. ... He must be unbalanced,”—
“There was something he said that I might have challenged.””
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“The necessary has never been man’s top priority. The passionate pursuit of the nonessential and the extravagant is one of the chief traits of human uniqueness. Unlike other forms of life, man’s greatest exertions are made in the pursuit not of necessities but of superfluities.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)