Passion

Meer enthusiasm is the all in all.
~ William Blake, in The Life of William Blake, Volume I (1863). Notes on Reynolds' Discourses (written c. 1798-1808; aka Annotations to The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds).

Those who control their passions do so because their passions are weak enough to be controlled.
~ William Blake

To be in a Passion you Good may do,
But no Good if a Passion is in you.
~ William Blake, from The Pickering Manuscript (c. 1803). Auguries of Innocence

God loves with a great love the man whose heart is bursting with a passion for the impossible.
~ William Booth

There is a passion for perfection which you will rarely see fully developed; but you may note this fact, that in successful lives it is never wholly lacking.
~ (William) Bliss Carman, The Friendship of Art (1904). On Being Ineffectual

There still are found a few to whom belong
The fire of virtue and the soul of song.
~ William Cliffton, in Poems, Chiefly Occasional (1800). Epistle To W. Gifford, Esq.

'Twas sad by fits, by starts 'twas wild.
~ William Collins, from Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects (1746). The Passions: An Ode to Music

By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes.
~ Bill Cosby, Fatherhood (1986). Chapter 10

I burn to set the imprison'd wranglers free,
And give them voice and utterance once again.
~ William Cowper, The Task (1785). Book IV. The Winter Evening

[W]ords, pregnant with celestial fire.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). Boadicea

The worst thing is to get involved with people who aren't passionate about what they're doing.
~ Willem Dafoe

If we always attempt to do all the good that we imagine we can do, we shall often be likely to do a great deal of harm.
~ William Danby, Ideas and Realities, or Thoughts on Various Subjects (1827).

There is no dispute managed without passion, and yet there is scarce any dispute worth a passion.
~ William De Britaine, Humane Prudence; Or, The Art By Which A Man May Raise Himself And Fortune To Grandeur (1693 edition). Section V. Of Discourse

As the passions are the springs of most of our actions, a state of apathy has come to signify a sort of moral inertia -- the absence of all activity or energy. According to the Stoics apathy meant the extinction of the passions by the ascendency of reason.
~ William Fleming, The Vocabulary of Philosophy, Mental, Moral, and Metaphysical (1856).

Books didn't figure in my family very much. ... However, my grandmother's attic was full of old, old books. ... In the summers we would go to North Dakota to visit her, and I would get in that attic and read everything in sight. That's when the passion started. I was maybe eight or nine.
~ William H. Gass, in Pif Magazine (October 2000). One on One with William Gass

No great and honourable deed can be achieved, but from passion.
~ William Godwin, Thoughts Occasioned By The Perusal Of Dr. Parr's Spital Sermon; Being A Reply to the Attacks of Dr. Parr, Mr. Mackintosh, the Author of an Essay On Population, and Others (1801).

[A] strong passion for any object will ensure success, for the desire of the end will point out the means.
~ William Hazlitt, from The Round Table, Vol. I (1817). On Manner

Envy is the most universal passion.
~ William Hazlitt, Characteristics: in the Manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims (1823).

Our notions with respect to the importance of life, and our attachment to it, depend on a principle which has very little to do with its happiness or its misery. ... The love of life is, in general, the effect not of our enjoyments, but of our passions.
~ William Hazlitt, first published in The Examiner (15 January 1815). On the Love of Life

Principle is a passion for truth.
~ William Hazlitt, from The Round Table, Vol. II (1817). On Good-Nature

Zeal will do more than knowledge.
~ William Hazlitt, from The Plain Speaker, Volume II (1826). Essay VII. On the Difference Between Writing and Speaking (written in 1825)

[W]e may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion.
~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (G.W.F.) Hegel, The Philosophy of History (1832). III. Philosophic History

In almost any subject your passion for the subject will save you.
~ William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology: and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (March 1899). XII. Memory

Refuse to express a passion, and it dies.
~ William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890). Vol. 2. Chapter XXV: The Emotions

[N]o man has ever yet made his mark on the world who was not possessed by some master passion.
~ William Mathews, Getting on in the World: Or, Hints on Success in Life (1872). Chapter V: Concentration, Or Oneness of Aim

Passion is destructive. ... And if it doesn't destroy it dies.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge (1944).

My interest in literature hasn't decreased. It just gets more passionate, actually.
~ William Keepers Maxwell, Jr., in The Washington Post (26 October 1997).

Every dream has its passion and every passion has its destiny.
~ Billy Mills

Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.
~ William Morris, in Justice (16 June 1894). How I Became a Socialist

Fear and Hope -- those are the names of the two great passions which rule the race of man.
~ William Morris (Lecture delivered to the Hammersmith Branch of the Socialist Democratic Federation, on November 30th, 1884), in Commonweal (1887). How We Live and How We Might Live

In music the passions enjoy themselves.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (1888).

The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and to beget.
~ William Osler, from Science and Immortality (1904). II. The Laodiceans

Never chide for Anger, but Instruction.
~ William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude (1693). Part I. Passion

Passion is a sort of fever in the mind, which ever leaves us weaker than it found us.
~ William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude (1693). Part I. Passion

Life is short. Follow your passion. Don't get stuck doing something you don't enjoy.
~ Will Shortz, Commencement Address at Indiana University, Bloomington IN (3 May 2008).

A man in all the world's new fashion planted,
That hath a mint of phrases in his brain;
One who the music of his own vain tongue
Doth ravish like enchanting harmony.
~ William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost. Act I, scene i

Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act III, scene ii

Have I caught thee, my heavenly jewel?
~ William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor. Act III, scene iii

O! for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry V. Act I, Prologue

O, that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth!
Then with a passion would I shake the world.
~ William Shakespeare, King John. Act III, scene iv

Of all base passions, fear is the most accursed.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part I. Act V, scene ii

Passion, I see, is catching.
~ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar. Act III, scene i

It is a miserable thing to love where one hates; and yet it is not inconsistent.
~ William Shenstone, in Works in Verse and Prose, Vol. II (1764). Essays on Men, Manners, and Things. Egotisms, from my own Sensations

Precedence is our ruling passion.
~ William Shenstone, in Works in Verse and Prose, Vol. I (1764). III. Levities; or, Pieces of Humour. The charms of precedence. A Tale

[P]assion is in all great searches and is necessary to all creative endeavors.
~ William (W.) Eugene Smith, from W. Eugene Smith, His Photographs And Notes (1969).

We know that every collector is an unconscious Don Juan who has transferred his passion from an erotic to a non-erotic sphere. But we also know that the passion with which the collected items are loved emanates from the erotic domain.
~ Wilhelm Stekhel, The Depths of the Soul (1921).

Fountain heads and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves.
~ William Strode, in The Poetical Works Of William Strode (1600-1645) (1907). Melancholy.

The man who has no passion for souls is liable to get mad at the drop of a hat.
~ William A. "Billy" Sunday, from The Real Billy Sunday: The Life and Work of Rev. William Ashley Sunday, D.D., The Baseball Evangelist (1914). XV: Some of Sunday's Sayings

Better no passions at all, than have them too violent; or such alone as, instead of heightening our pleasures, afford us nothing but vexation and pain.
~ Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet, in The Works of Sir William Temple, Bart., Vol. III (1814 edition). Letter to the Countess of Essex; Upon Her Grief (29 January 1674)

Politeness is the end of passion.
~ Bill Veeck, Jr., quoted in the Washington Post (31 May 1981).

The impassioned argument was simple truth
Half-wondering at its own melodious tongue.
~ William Watson, from Wordworth's Grave and Other Poems (1890). Wordsworth's Grave, Part III

[F]irst in myth, later in reality, passion and violence watered my root soil.
~ Roy Wilkins

All great passion isolates the heart by which it is possessed.
~ William Winter, The Stage Life of Mary Anderson (1886). VI. Juliet

True passion is not a wisp-light -- it is a consuming flame, and either it must find fruition or it will burn the heart in which it has been enkindled to dust and ashes.
~ William Winter, The Wallet of Time: Containing Personal, Biographical, and Critical Reminiscence of the American Theatre. Vol. II (1913). I. Mary Anderson

[T]he passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature.
~ William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads, Vol. I (1800 edition). Preface

And after all, can we come to so great evil if we keep a little fire on our hearths and in our souls, and welcome with open hand whatever of excellent come to warm itself.
~ William Butler Yeats, from The Celtic Twilight (1893). Belief and Unbelief

It is not permitted to a man who takes up pen or chisel, to seek originality, for passion is his only business, and he cannot but mould or sing after a new fashion because no disaster is like another.
~ William Butler Yeats, Per Amica Silentia Lunae (1918). Anima Hominis. X

Passion has often worn our wandering hearts.
~ William Butler Yeats, from Crossways (1889). Ephemera