passion

No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.

The free expression of opinion, as experience has taught us, is the safety-valve of passion. The noise of the rushing steam, when it escapes, alarms the timid; but it is the sign that we are safe. The concession of reasonable privilege anticipates the growth of furious-appetite.

Alas! it is not till time, with reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the Book of Human Life to light the fires of passion with from day to day, that man begins to see that the leaves which remain are few in number.

Something the heart must have to cherish, Must love and joy and sorrow learn; Something with passion clasp, or perish And in itself to ashes burn.

If ignorance and passion are the foes of popular morality, it must be confessed that moral indifference is the malady of the cultivated classes.

Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.

No matter how you look at it, all the emotions connected with love are not really immortal; like all other passions in life, they are bound to fade at some point. The trick is to convert love into some lasting friendship that overcomes the fading passion.

Puccini's personal life was an interesting one. He was exceedingly fond of hunting, smoking, attractive woman, mechanical devices of any kind, and acquiring houses. He died in 1924 from a heart attack while undergoing treatment for throat cancer. He was 65 years old. A national state of mourning was declared in Italy. Despite torrential rain, mourners lined the streets of Milan in tribute to the composer of some of the most popular works in the history of opera. Puccini chose to write about the everyday rather than the heroic. He understood the little things of life and portrayed them with sensitivity. Another reason for his popularity was his ability to write glowing melodies --- intimate, tender, passionate melodies. He understood the power of melody to express the deepest emotions, and his orchestral writing was eloquent. He was not only a highly skillful musician, but a poet who understood the significance of the smallest details, and a dramatist who possessed an innate sense of pacing and timing. While he was in the process of composing La Boheme, he wrote that his style was "poetry and again poetry - tenderness mixed with pain; sensuality; a drama surprising and burning; and a rocketing finale."

Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.