7 & 7: Passionate vs. Complacent

REFLECTION:

Fervor flows with the first breath of life. In a perfect world, this stream of energy would be constant, relentless, unimpeded through all one’s time. Yet life presents obstacles, both internal and external. Complacency finds its way through the door of comfort and luxury on the one hand or through the cracks of resignation and hopelessness on the other. The greatest civilizations have never lacked for passion, for seeking, for striving for a certain belief, an ideal that unleashed great thoughts and actions. People of reason rarely can compete with those whose interest is personal and complete. The juice flows with the first step and continues beyond the last, expecting nothing, fearing nothing. There are no detours. There is no turning back. The eye of passion is on the possible.

MUSES:

Happy the man who gains sagacity in youth, but thrice happy he who retains the fervor of youth in age.
Dagobert Runes

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
Charles Kingsley

What our age lacks is not reflection but passion.
Soren Kierkegaard

I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.
Vincent van Gogh

The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Blessed is he who carries within himself a god and an ideal and who obeys it – an ideal of art, of science, or gospel virtues. Therein lie the springs of great thoughts and great actions.
Louis Pasteur

Would you persuade, speak of interest, not of reason.
Benjamin Franklin

As long as you can start, you are all right. The juice will come.
Ernest Hemingway

If thou workest at that which is before thee … expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with thy present activity according to Nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which thou utterest, thou wilt live happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.
Marcus Aurelius

My face is set, my gait is fast, my goal is Heaven, my road is narrow, my way is rough, my companions are few, my guide is reliable, my mission is clear. I cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away, turned back, diluted, or delayed. I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of adversity, negotiate … at the table of the enemy, ponder at the pool of popularity, or meander in a maze of mediocrity. I won’t give up, shut up, let up or slow up.

Robert Moorehead

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible… what wine is so sparkling, so fragrant, so intoxicating, as possibility!
Søren Kierkegaard