Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.

Passion

Passions are like fire and water, good servants, but bad masters.
—Anonymous

The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.
—C. N. Bovée

A man without a passion is like a vessel waiting for wind and not budging.
—Arsène Houssaye

Passions are like roses, the more you cut them, the more they grow.
—Arsène Houssaye

Passions are cheap things, common as nuts, and just as often rotten.
—George W. Lovell

Passions, among pure thoughts hid,
Like serpents under flowerets sleeping.
—Thomas Moore

Passion, like the sun at noon,
That burns o’er all he sees,
Awhile as warm, will set as soon—
Then, call it none of these.
—Thomas Moore

Our passions are like convulsive fits, which, though they make us stronger for the time, leave us weaker ever after.
—Alexander Pope

Passions are likened best to floods and streams; the shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.
—Sir Walter Raleigh

Passions are like storms which, full of the present mischief, serve to purify the atmosphere.
—Sir George Ramsay

Our passions, like the seasons turn;
And now we laugh, and now we mourn.
—Nicholas Rowe