Alexander Pope Quotes

For each character, I try to understand what is driving them.

You have to identify what you care about and why you care about it. It has to be personal. It has to be something that fires you up or means something to you, or it's not going to drive you.

Knowledge of mankind is a knowledge of their passions.

Search then the ruling passion; there alone, The wild are constant, and the cunning known; The fool consistent, and the false sincere; Priests, princes, women, no dissemblers here.

Lust is the source of all our actions, and humanity.

Passion. It lies in all of us. Sleeping... waiting... and though unwanted, unbidden, it will stir... open its jaws and howl. It speaks to us... guides us. Passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love... the clarity of hatred... the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, maybe we'd know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank. Without passion, we'd be truly dead.

I like it all. I love getting inside of people's heads and playing what drives people and what makes them do what they do. That's always been what's most interesting to me about being an actor. The analyzing of what's happening, but even more so, just letting it all go and playing is fun. I love just seeing what comes out of you.

When you find out a man's ruling passion, beware of crossing him in it.

What is the fire that burns in your heart? If you are lucky enough to discover it, than by all means fan the flames and let the fire be the guiding light for a life worth living.

Passion... it lies in all of us. Sleeping, waiting, and though unwanted, unbidden, it will stir, open its jaws, and howl. It speaks to us, guides us... passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have?

Only passions can raise a man above the level of the animal.

Passion is not a quality that is foreign to you. It is not a characteristic that some people are born with and some must do without. To be passionate is as natural to you as breathing, as natural as being alive. It is the source of who you are.

When I leave the theater I can always hear people talking about the character, and everyone always says, "You know, I know someone like her." And I always think, Everyone knows someone like the characters; nobody is like the character. Nobody wants to admit that they are a little bit like that.

My vocation, at last I have found it; my vocation is love.

The love of liberty was the ruling passion of these Germans; the enjoyment of it, their best treasure; the word that expressed that enjoyment the most pleasing to their ear. They deserved, they assumed, they maintained the honourable epithet of Franks or Freemen; which concealed, though it did not extinguish, the peculiar names of the several states of the confederacy.

When you have found out the prevailing passion of any man, remember never to trust him where that passion is concerned.

A pure heart and mind only takes you so far - sooner or later the hormones have their say, too.

It is good that man should accept at face value the cheats of sense and snares of flesh, and through the fogs of sentiency pursue the lures and lies of passion.

In how large a proportion of creatures is existence composed of one ruling passion, the most agonizing of all sensations--fear.

His passions make man live, his wisdom merely makes him last.

Desire , to know why, and how, CURIOSITY; such as is in no living creature but Man ; so that Man is distinguished, not only by his Reason; but also by this singular Passion from other Animals ; in whom the appetite of food, and other pleasures of Sense, by predominance, take away the care of knowing causes; which is a Lust of the mind, that by a perseverance of delight in the continual and indefatigable generation of Knowledge, exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnal Pleasure.

Reason is the slave of passion.

Savage peoples are ruled by passion, civilized peoples by the mind.

What's this? That little red-haired girl dropped her pencil... Gee... It's got teeth marks all over it... She nibbles her pencil... She's human!