Our true history is scarcely ever deciphered by others. The chief part of the drama is a monologue, or rather an intimate debate between God, our conscience, and ourselves. Tears, grieves, depressions, disappointments, irritations, good and evil thoughts, decisions, uncertainties, deliberations --all these belong to our secret, and are almost all incommunicable and intransmissible, even when we try to speak of them, and even when we write them down.
Henri Frederic AmielWithout 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.
Henri Frederic Amiel