Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and the unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.

Those who have had great passions find themselves all their lives both happy and unhappy at being cured of them.

Live passionately, even if it kills you, because something is going to kill you anyway.

Follow your bliss.

The way to avoid evil is not by maiming our passions, but by compelling them to yield their vigor to our moral nature.

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.

One declaims endlessly against the passions; one imputes all of man's suffering to them. One forgets that they are also the source of all his pleasures.

Passions destroy more prejudices than philosophy does.

Serving one's own passions is the greatest slavery.

Passions are spiritual rebels and raise sedition against the understanding.