The ruling passion, be it what it will. The ruling passion conquers reason still.

I only act from my heart.

Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.

Uncontrolled, the hunger and thirst after God may become an obstacle, cutting off the soul from what it desires. If a man would travel far along the mystic road, he must learn to desire God intensely but in stillness, passively and yet with all his heart and mind and strength.

The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude.

I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.

Truthfully, without over-egging it, as I often do, the library and journalism, those things made me who I am.

The law is reason, free from passion.

I enjoy acting when you really hit it right.

Nobody likes to fail. I want to succeed in everything I do, which isn’t much. But the things that I’m really passionate about, if I fail at those, if I’m not successful, what do I have?

I’ve always wanted to make a career in the arts, and I think that my only hope at doing that is to make it more about the work.

I’m afraid that reason will triumph and that the world will become a place where anyone who doesn’t fit that will become unnecessary.

I’m never gonna step away from stand-up. I can’t. That’s what got me where I am, and that’s also my muse. That’s how I stay level-headed. That’s what keeps me going.

Faith… must be enforced by reason… when faith becomes blind it dies.

In England, football is a big thing to talk about, but Liverpool, it’s a special place. You feel it when you make your first step.

I love wisdom. And you can never be great at anything unless you love it. Not be in love with it, but love the thing, admire the thing. And it seems that if you love the thing, and you don’t just want to possess it, it will find you.

If you have passion, there is no need for excuses because your enthusiasm will trump any negative reasoning you might come up with. Enthusiasm makes excuses a nonissue.

I believe in singing.

The best football is always about expression of emotion. Always.

I cook, I create, I’m incredibly excited by what I do, I’ve still got a lot to achieve.

For me, it’s about becoming a mogul, owning my own projects, and establishing myself as a funding producer. That’s what’s big to me. The movies and all that stuff are great, but the fact that I’m in a position to do what I want to do, however I want to do it and when I want to do it is bigger.

The more nobly a man wills and acts, the more avid he becomes for great and sublime aims to pursue. He will no longer be content with family, country, and the remunerative aspect of his work. He will want wider organisations to create, new paths to blaze, causes to uphold, truths to discover, an ideal to cherish and defend.

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

Van Gogh never made a penny in his entire lifetime. He painted because it was his soul, his excitement. It was what aligned him with his Source of being. It’s the same with me and writing.

O, you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you, and I would have ended my life – it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.

It doesn’t matter if you want to be a teacher, an astronaut, or a reggaeton singer, you need to study.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work. So as an author, I need to write what I need to write.

I’ve never met a genius. A genius to me is someone who does well at something he hates. Anybody can do well at something he loves – it’s just a question of finding the subject.

Not bragging by any means, but I could have done a lot of other stuff as far as working in films go and working in television… I had chances to do that stuff, but I like baseball, I really do.

It’s hard to tell with these Internet startups if they’re really interested in building companies or if they’re just interested in the money. I can tell you, though: If they don’t really want to build a company, they won’t luck into it. That’s because it’s so hard that if you don’t have a passion, you’ll give up.

You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor.

You will never fulfill your destiny doing work you despise.

I just was never into performing. It’s just hard work. It’s hard work.

My focus is my art, and that’s what I love to do. I have to be really passionate in order to do something. I’ve turned down many things that I just didn’t believe in.

Red is such an interesting color to correlate with emotion, because it’s on both ends of the spectrum. On one end you have happiness, falling in love, infatuation with someone, passion, all that. On the other end, you’ve got obsession, jealousy, danger, fear, anger and frustration.

I never wanted to sing. I just wanted to play rhythm guitar – hide in the back and just play.

I tried acting, liked it, and stuck with it. I saw it as the way I would keep that promise to myself of getting back at those who had made my school life a misery.

I’ve been writing my entire life, and I’ll always write.

The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual’s own reason and critical analysis.

Those who know me know I’m passionate about lists, and top of my list of priorities is my family. My wife Joan and I do not consider our legacy to our children to be wealth or fame but the opportunity to pursue happiness by following their own path.

I loved writing for kids, I loved talking to children about what I’d written, I don’t want to leave that behind.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.

Jump out the window if you are the object of passion. Flee it if you feel it. Passion goes, boredom remains.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work.

When I look at acting careers that I really admire, I see that it’s been a precise decision-making process for these people. They make decisions based on what they love, and they do only the things that they are passionate about. They play only characters that they can’t stop thinking about.

Like my friend Warren Buffett, I feel particularly lucky to do something every day that I love to do. He calls it ‚tap-dancing to work.‘

Every formula of every religion has in this age of reason, to submit to the acid test of reason and universal assent.

Football is all about fans.

As for me, prizes are nothing. My prize is my work.

I really love training and being in good shape, and it’s so much a part of my life now, so it never really feels like work to me.

Doing what you love is the cornerstone of having abundance in your life.

I love to play music. So why endanger that with something like drugs?

You don’t come into cooking to get rich.

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.

The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

The senses are of the earth, the reason stands apart from them in contemplation.

Strong emotions such as passion and bliss are indications that you’re connected to Spirit, or ‚inspired,‘ if you will. When you’re inspired, you activate dormant forces, and the abundance you seek in any form comes streaming into your life.

I’ve dreamed about doing music since I was three or four years old.