The capacity of passion is both cruel and divine

[The Passion story] completely destroys the aesthetics of the separation of styles; it engenders a new elevated style, which does not scorn everyday life and which is ready to absorb the sensory realistic, even the ugly, the undignified, the physically base. Or—if anyone prefers to have it the other way around—a new sermo humilis is born, a low style, such as would properly only be applicable to comedy, but which now reaches out far beyond its original domain, and encroaches upon the deepest and the highest, the sublime and the eternal.

To write tragedy, a man must feel tragedy. To feel tragedy, a man must be aware of the world in which he lives. Not only with his mind, but with his blood and sinews.

The passion of Christ is the victory of divine love over the powers of evil, and therefore it is the only supportable basis for Christian obedience. Once again, Jesus calls those who follow him to share his passion. How can we convince the world by our preaching of the passion when we shrink from that passion in our own lives? On the cross Jesus fulfilled the law he himself established and thus graciously keeps his disciples in the fellowship of his suffering.

Every human reality is a passion in that it projects losing itself so as to found being and by the same stroke to constitute the In-itself which escapes contingency by being its own foundation, the Ens causa sui,
which religions call God. Thus the passion of man is the reverse of that of Christ, for man loses himself as man in order that God may be born. But the idea of God is contradictory and we lose ourselves in vain. Man is a useless passion.

Each human reality is at the same time a direct project to metamorphose its own For-itself into an In-itself-For-itself, a project of the appropriation of the world as a totality of being-in-itself, in the form of a fundamental quality. Every human reality is a passion in that it projects losing itself so as to found being and by the same stroke to constitute the In-itself which escapes contingency by being its own foundation, the Ens causa sui, which religions call God. Thus the passion of man is the reverse of that of Christ, for man loses himself as man in order that God may be born. But the idea of God is contradictory and we lose ourselves in vain. Man is a useless passion.

With passion you want to possess. The conversion of passion into compassion is the whole problem of marriage.

Passion! Passion! We live by this and nothing else. Passion is the power of prayer. The power of will. The power of meditation. The power of the way of the gods. Passion, in other words, is the power of spiritual concentration. And spiritual concentration is the one and only gateway to the realm of mystery and wonder.

how infinitely passionate a thing religion at its highest flights can be. Like love, like wrath, like hope, ambition, jealousy, like every other instinctive eagerness and impulse, it adds to life an enchantment which is not rationally or logically deducible from anything else.

What is passion? Passion is a strong emotion — emotion is an energy, which propels us to commit to ourselves. If we need to achieve anything or get somewhere in life, we need to clearly have a focal point and go after it with all we’ve got. Whatever we do, we must put our hearts into it. If we put our hearts into it, it will open new opportunities. People say, ‘If I had a better job, I would put my heart into it.’ It is an illusion. That’s why people do a half day’s job and collect a full day’s salary. No wonder, they do not get anywhere in life. Trying to motivate people who lack passion is like resurrecting someone from the dead. It’s like putting in all your energy to inflate a balloon with a hole in it; no matter how much sweat you put in to blow it up, it will not go up. You inflate, they deflate, you inflate they deflate!

Passion is what makes life interesting, what ignites our soul, drives our curiosity, fuels our love and carries our friendship, stimulates our intellect, and pushes our limit.... A passion for life is contagious and uplifting. Passion cuts both ways.... Those that make you feel on top of the world are equally able to turnit upside down.....

To answer the question, what makes a tragedy, is to answer the question wherein lies the essential significance of life, what the dignity of humanity depends upon in the last analysis. Here the tragedians speak to us with no uncertain voice. The great tragedies themselves offer the solution to the problem they propound. It is by our power to suffer, above all, that we are of more value than the sparrows. Endow them with a greater or as great a potentiality of pain and our foremost place in the world would no longer be undisputed. Deep down, when we search out the reason for our conviction of the transcendent worth of each human being, we know that it is because of the possibility that each can suffer so terribly. What do outside trappings matter, Zenith or Elsinore? Tragedy’s preoccupation is with suffering. But,

It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such
an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their
absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack
of style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us
an impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that.
Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of
beauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, the
whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly
we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the
play. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder
of the spectacle enthralls us.

I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly.