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.

Two out of the three, Doc Dickson and Pap Spooner, had passed to the shades, and the legend ran that when their disembodied spirits reached the banks of Styx, the ruling passion of their lives asserted itself for the last time.

I passed through the ordinary course of education with success, and was seized very early with a passion for literature, which has been the ruling passion of my life, and the great source of my enjoyments.

This prince was nowise turbulent or factious in his disposition: his ruling passion was to amass money, in which he succeeded so well as to become the richest subject in Christendom: yet his attention to gain threw him sometimes into acts of violence; and gave disturbance to the government.

Conflict of dirt and warmth combin'd, Invokedand scandalised the Nine." What Pope thought of the Duke he expressed with the utmost vigour: "Wharton, the scorn and wonder of our days, Whose ruling passion was the lust of praise: Born with whate'er could win it from the wise, Women and fools must like him, or he dies: Though wondering senates hung on all he spoke.

As his powers failed with age the ruling passion for order assumed a greater prominence; and in his last days he seemed to be more anxious to put letters which he received into their proper place for reference than even to master their contents.

Pope's doctrine, about the ruling passion, does not seem to be refuted, though it is called, in harsh terms, pernicious, as well as false, tending to establish a kind of moral predestination, or overruling principle, which cannot be resisted.

Laura, with "the ruling passion strong in death," still tried to draw, but broke her pet crayon, and endowed her Clytie with a supplementary orb, owing to the dimness of her own.

This dogma of the "ruling passion" belongs rather to the eighteenth century than to the close of the nineteenth.

To build large and even magnificent churches seemed to be a ruling passion with the colored people.

The sister, who had lived for many years in Paris at her brother's expense, for indolence was her ruling passion, agreed to resume her life in a city where, she used to say, folks are free and need not depend on their neighbours.

Since then Oily Dave had hated the storekeeper with a zest and energy which bade fair to become the ruling passion of his life; but except for a few minor disagreeables, that could hardly be said to count, his ill will had thus far not gone beyond sneer and invective.

Not one has a ruling passion, such as we read of in Pope.

The curiosity which, as I have said, constituted my ruling passion, stimulated me to make it my perpetual study.

So strong was this ruling passion, that when the patriot army has been closely pursued by the royalists, and pay has been issued to lighten the military chest, the officers, upon halting, would spread their ponchos on the ground, and play until it was time to resume the march; and this was frequently done even on the eve of a battle.

The Abbé, who understands English well, was delighted with the variety, and on calling again in a few days, we found the venerable patriot had been searching for all the passages on liberty, which he had distinguished by registers: what an evidence is this of his ruling passion.

It may slumber for a time, it may falter, it may freeze nearly to death; but sooner or later it will declare itself as the ruling passion.

In a remarkable manner, he showed this "ruling passion strong in death."

"It seems to be a ruling passion amongst certain writers to portray anybody connected with commerce as being an ungrammatical ignoramus.

Five years afterwards his ruling passion, ambition, exhibited itself, together with that mixture of boldness and craft which was to characterize his whole life.

Wallenstein is the model of a high-souled, great, accomplished man, whose ruling passion is ambition.

"War was the ruling passion of this people," says MacGeoghegan, meaning the Milesians who were the latest of the peoples that overran ancient Ireland up to the coming of Christ.

His ruling passion, notwithstanding, kept firm hold of his soul, and very soon betrayed him into the commission of new offences.

That sounds like the ruling passion, strong in death, of the Son of Thunder; who in youth asked if he should call down fire from heaven upon a hamlet which did not welcome Jesus, and was well rebuked for his zeal by the gracious Master.

Her disappointment in the expectation of affluence and splendor, which I believe her ruling passion, would afford a perpetual source of discontent and mutual wretchedness.