master-passion

She answered gently: "I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you."

Jesse Kornbluth: Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol Jesse Kornbluth 2010

She answered gently: "I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you."

Jesse Kornbluth: Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol Jesse Kornbluth 2010

The master-passion had given a stamp of originality to an ursine physiognomy; his nose had developed till it reached the proportions of a double great-canon A; his veined cheeks looked like vine-leaves, covered, as they were, with bloated patches of purple, madder red, and often mottled hues; till altogether, the countenance suggested a huge truffle clasped about by autumn vine tendrils.

Two Poets 2007

The master-passion had given a stamp of originality to an ursine physiognomy; his nose had developed till it reached the proportions of a double great-canon A; his veined cheeks looked like vine-leaves, covered, as they were, with bloated patches of purple, madder red, and often mottled hues; till altogether, the countenance suggested a huge truffle clasped about by autumn vine tendrils.

Two Poets 2007

Indeed, some would have called him a man not altogether typical of the middle-class male of a century wherein sordid ambition is the master-passion that seems to be taking the time-honoured place of love.

Life's Little Ironies 2006

As soon as these dire magicians and tyrantmakers find that they are losing their hold on him, they contrive to implant in him a master-passion, to be lord over his idle and spendthrift lusts — a sort of monstrous winged drone — that is the only image which will adequately describe him.

The Republic by Plato ; translated by Benjamin Jowett 2006

I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Stave 2 The First of the Three Spirits | Solar Flare: Science Fiction News 2004

His past existence had disciplined him to bear disaster and insult, as few happier men could have borne them; but it had not prepared him to feel the master-passion of humanity, for the first time, at the dreary end of his life, in the hopeless decay of a manhood that had withered under the double blight of conjugal disappointment and parental sorrow.

Armadale 2003

The master-passion of shopping might claim his own again — but the ghost was not laid yet.

No Name 2003

The Magdalen of his innocent experience, a woman — with the master-passion of her sex in possession of her heart already!

No Name 2003